Bodies of Song

Bodies of Song
Bodies of Song
Kabir Oral Traditions and
Performative Worlds in North India
z
LINDA HESS
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hess, Linda, author.

Bodies of song : Kabir oral traditions and performative
worlds in North India / Linda Hess.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–937417–5 (paperback) — ISBN 978–0–19–937416–8 (hardback) 1. Kabir,
active 15th century—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Oral tradition—India—Malwa
(Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) 3. Malwa (Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan,
India)—Religion. I. Title.
PK2095.K3Z696 2015
891.4′312—dc23
2014036589
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix
Transliteration xiii
Introduction 1
1. “You Must Meet Prahladji!” 19
2. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Observing Texts 73
3. True Words of Kabir: Adventures in Authenticity 112
4. In the Jeweler’s Bazaar: Malwa’s Kabir 149
5. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring Theory 203
6. A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool 249
7. Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body 315
8. Political / Spiritual Kabir 345
Notes 399
References 439
Index 449
List of Figures
I.1. Prahladji and group performing on stage in Bangalore,

with Shabnam Virmani. Photo by Jackson Poretta. 12
1.1. Prahladji sings with his younger brother Ashok.
Photo by Kedar Desai. 21
1.2. Rural audience late at night, showing women’s and
men’s sections. Photo by Smriti Chanchani. 52
2.1. Prahladji’s hand on an old handwritten bhajan
notebook. Photo by Smriti Chanchani. 83
2.2. Shabnam and Prahladji singing together. Photo by
Smriti Chanchani. 100
2.3. Audio and video CD covers. Photo by Linda Hess. 105
4.1. Shantiji, Prahladji’s wife, makes chapatis during
conversation in kitchen. Photo by Shabnam Virmani. 176
6.1. R. N. Syag, during our car conversation presented
in c hapters 6 and 8. Photo by Shabnam Virmani. 256
6.2. Dinesh Sharma, who organized and documented
the Kabir manch with the NGO Eklavya, holds
a picture of the great Dalit anticaste leader
B. R. Ambedkar. Photo by Shabnam Virmani. 259
6.3. Hiralal Sisodiya. Photo by Shabnam Virmani. 284
6.4. Narayanji breaks into dance at a village
performance. Photo by Hari Adivarekar. 289
6.5. Kaluram Bamaniya singing. Photo by Smriti
Chanchani. 298
6.6. Dinesh Sharma with singer Dayaram Sarolia.
Photo by Shabnam Virmani. 314
7.1. Prahladji performs chaukā āratī ritual during his
period as a mahant of the Kabir Panth. Photo by
Smriti Chanchani. 334
Acknowledgments
Doing acknowledgments always reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s

table. In one of his early books the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher asks,
“What is the table and how did it get here?” He starts with wood and car-
penter, and eventually, having acknowledged items like merchants, tools,
truck drivers, forests, sky, and rain, he demonstrates that we must include
the whole world in appreciating what this table is and who made it possible.
That doesn’t actually help me write the acknowledgments. True, every-
thing is connected and my debt is incalculable. But even as the Mahayana
Buddhists say that form is emptiness (emphasizing the oneness and
boundlessness of everything), they also say that emptiness is form, bring-
ing us back to particularities.
First, I bow to the Kabir singers and musicians of Malwa. Among them
my greatest gratitude belongs to Prahlad Singh Tipanya, whose fame has
grown ever larger since we met at the end of 1999. Prahladji’s high spir-
its, glorious music, astonishing energy, profound knowledge, generosity,
and lively sense of humor have changed my life. Since the Rakhi celebra-
tion of August 2002, he has been my official brother. He has taught me
immeasurably—by singing, discussing, explaining, laughing, hanging
out, taking many trips together.
Other performers in Malwa with whom I’ve become particularly close
are Narayan Singh Delmia, Kaluram Bamaniya, Ajay and Vijay Tipanya,
and Devnarayan Sarolia—all amazing and wonderful musicians and
human beings. I’m delighted and fortunate to know and work with them.
When Prahladji became my brother, his whole family became my
sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren (our English kin-
ship terms are poor compared to the Hindi). I embrace Prahladji’s wife
Shantiji—a welcoming, good-humored, capable, and caring female
head of family and manager of the performing artist’s home world. His
brothers Ambaram and Ashok, their wives Kamla and Sumitra; Shantiji
x Acknowledgments
and Prahladji’s sons and daughters-in-law Ajay and Sangeeta, Vijay and
Seema; their daughter Sona; all the nieces and nephews and babies; the
very old patriarch, Prahladji’s father, who was called “Da-ji” and who
passed away from this earth at a very old age in 2014—they have become
part of my life.
Shabnam Virmani of Bangalore and beyond—filmmaker, singer,
media artist, friend, collaborator, soulmate—most recently helped me fig-
ure out how to end c hapter 8 and how to break through my confusion in
booking a flight to India. She taught me not to say “thank you” and “sorry”
too much to a real friend.
Smriti Chanchani of the Kabir Project in Bangalore, a beautiful friend,
has lent her amazing artistic talents and technical skills on many occa-
sions. Many of the pictures in the book, including the cover, were taken
by her.
Anu Gupta and Arvind Sardana of Eklavya in Dewas, unstintingly gen-
erous, kind, delightful, living their values at home and in the world, have
been my hosts, companions, and advisers over more than a decade of com-
ing and going.
R. N. Syag, the original director of Eklavya’s Kabir bhajan evam vichār
manch, is a wise and kind man with clarity in his commitments, skill in
dialogue, and a great smile that lights up the space even when he’s respect-
fully disagreeing with me.
The Soni family of Dewas—Kailash and Garima, Ambuj, Rati,
Utkarsha, and Oj—have been my hosts and helpers in countless ways.
Ambuj is my go-to person for all sorts of needs. I love the warm, bright,
friendly feeling of their home.
I extend warm appreciation to Indore friends in the organization Kabir
Jan Vikas Samuh, especially Suresh Patel, who remains dedicated to con-
necting Kabir’s inspiring poetry and song to social justice and equality.
Purushottam Agrawal is a brilliant and passionate Kabir scholar, cre-
ative writer, and social-political commentator with Kabirian streaks of
irony and satire, underlain by a warm love of humanity. To him and to his
wife, the poet Suman Keshari, I offer gratitude for hospitality and many
wonderful conversations.
Ashok Vajpeyi—extraordinary poet, prose-writer, cultural leader, a per-
son of effervescent spirits and reliable humanitarian values—has helped
me in fundamental ways on two book projects in the last decade. He was
the first to direct me to Malwa and Prahlad Singh Tipanya. He was my
invaluable liaison to the family of Kumar Gandharva. Here’s to the IIC
Annexe Lounge, where many of his creative activities flourish!
Acknowledgments xi
Ramachandra Guha has been a generous friend, consultant, and inspi-

ration as a writer and historian. Among other gifts, he introduced me to
Rukun Advani, whose wonderful Permanent Black I had dreamed might
become the publisher of my book in India. The dream came true, thanks
to the kindness of Rukun and Ram.
The Berkeley Zen Center has been my warmhearted spiritual home
for quite a long time. How improbable and lucky! Lots of emptiness, lots
of form. Symbolically, I’ll mention Sojun Mel, Hozan Alan, Laurie, Mary,
Christy, Colleen, Marie, Susan, Anne, Karen. There could be many more.
They all helped me finish the book.
Gay Searcy gets a paragraph of her own. Though quite an everyday
thing, I find it mysterious.
Who would have guessed that Stanford University—after a somewhat
tormented undergraduate life there in the 1960s, then three decades mov-
ing about—would in the 1990s become a nourishing professional home
that would give me everything I needed (and thought I’d lost) to imag-
ine and carry out a project like this? Special thanks to the people of the
Department of Religious Studies, as well as others, whose generosity, sup-
port, and collaboration have opened many doors for me.
Bulbul Tiwari did a very helpful round of editorial work on an earlier
draft of the book. Francesca Orsini responded with warmth and learned
detail to a penultimate version. Jack Hawley has always been amazingly
ready and quick to inform, comment, and advise at my request, and I have
requested often. (When he answers an email within a few hours, he apolo-
gizes for the delay.) My friend and fellow Kabir scholar David Lorenzen has
shared vast knowledge, generous support, and kind suggestions since we
met in Varanasi nearly forty years ago. Encouragement and support from
Laurie Patton, Kirin Narayan, Ann Gold, Philip Lutgendorf, and Wendy
Doniger have been crucial along the way. Carolyn Karcher commented
generously on an early draft; my long and precious friendship with her
and Martin Karcher has been like the priceless jewel in a Kabir poem.
My good friend Matthew Rahaim, hanging out with me in a café at
Stanford, suggested that the sleepy picture I had chosen for the cover was
not the best choice, and that the one we have used, bursting with energy,
would be a great. He was so right.
The American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) has supported my life
and study in India on multiple occasions, from the initial summer lan-
guage program in 1973 to a senior fellowship in 2002 for the first year of
fieldwork on this book. All the India-based work I have ever done is inter-
woven with gratitude to AIIS. A Guggenheim fellowship in 2011 allowed
xii Acknowledgments
me to complete the first draft of the book. I thank all the people who made
such generous support possible.
The editorial team at Oxford University Press has been extremely help-
ful, careful, and in all ways admirable. My thanks to Cynthia Read, Glenn
Ramirez, David Joseph, Kay Kodner, and Sudha Ramprasath.
I am unspeakably grateful to have a close family: my husband
Kaz Tanahashi, daughter Karuna Izumi Hess Tanahashi, and son
Ko Hanshan Hess Tanahashi. Both kids got middle names of great
Asian poets (Izumi a passionate/romantic/contemplative woman
poet of eleventh-century Japan, Hanshan a laughing Zen hermit of
ninth-century China who wrote poems on the rocks and trees of Cold
Mountain). Kaz, whose art, writings, and activism have inspired many,
also has translated poetry of great Japanese Zen writers like Ryokan,
Hakuin, and Dogen. I join the family circle with my fifteenth-century
Indian iconoclastic mystic oral poet.
Transliteration
This book uses a modified scholarly transliteration, in which certain let-

ters are shown as they are pronounced, rather than in the standard schol-
arly way, which would likely lead to mispronunciation. The exceptions to
standard transliteration are the following:
ś = śh; ṣ = ṣh; c = ch; ch = chh; ṛ = ṛi; jñ = gy.
For mid-word nasal sounds, “n” or “m” is used, whichever mostly closely
approximates the right pronunciation; for end-word nasal, “ṇ.” The Hindi
letter representing the palatal “d,” and the same letter with a dot under-
neath in Hindi, are both transliterated as ḍ (creating a slight ambiguity).
For capitalized names of people and places, diacritical marks are not used,
and English spellings normally used in India are preferred to “correct”
transliteration (thus “Tiwari” instead of “Tivari”).
Two Hindi words are used so often that they are not italicized after the
first use: “bhakti” and “bhajan.”
Bodies of Song
Introduction
This book is about Kabir; about oral tradition and the oral-performative
lives of texts; about poetry and music; and about communities that
coalesce around Kabir, his poetry, and music. Widening the lens, we could
also say that it is about religion, literature, society, and expressive culture
in North and Central India—particularly in the Malwa region of Madhya
Pradesh—in the early twenty-first century, as revealed by the study of
Kabir oral traditions.1
One of the great features of oral tradition is that it is embodied, with
givers and receivers physically present in the same place and time. So
if you want to meet it, you have to do so through people. Reading this
book, you are going to meet a lot of people; I hope you will feel that you
have come to know some of them fairly well, and that you are getting
to know Kabir through them. Poets of India’s vernacular devotional and
mystical traditions (commonly referred to as bhakti) generally use a signa-
ture line, or chhāp, that identifies them near the end of the poem. Kabir’s
chhāp is unique in that it nearly always begins with a version of kahe kabīr
suno: “Kabir says, listen!” It is not, as Ashok Vajpeyi quipped at a liter-
ary gathering in Delhi, kahe kabīr paḍho: “Kabir says, read!” “Listening”
implies live engagement of the body, a wholehearted presence that is
contrasted with the insubstantiality of mere words and ideas. Here is one
of the Kabir verses that became a joking commentary about me and my
scholarly pursuits:
Maiṇ kahatā ānkhoṇ kī dekhī

tū kahatā kāgaz kī lekhī
terā merā manavā ek kaise hoi re
2 Bodies of Song
I talk of what I’ve seen with my own eyes,

you talk of what’s written on paper.
How can your mind and mine
ever get together?
A pervasive irony of this book is that it is a book. It enthuses about

embodied experience through the medium of words on paper. I tell myself
different stories about how this endeavor could make sense. If you are
reading the book, you may be thinking about it too. I won’t try to explain
or justify it. Reflecting on the continuing presence of books in our lives, as
well as the rapid transformation of their function and importance, is part
of the fun for both readers and writer.
Listen
Kabir’s signature line is so famous that millions of Hindi speakers will
readily produce it when asked: kahe kabīr suno. No other Indian poet
of popular bhakti tradition is associated with this phrase the way Kabir
is.2 How seriously should we take it? To understand Kabir, is it impor-
tant to heed his exhortation and listen—to the words, the song, the
sound? Whether or not literal listening is necessary, we can say uncon-
troversially that with this constantly recurring chhāp, Kabir calls atten-
tion to his own orality. His style is also uniquely associated with the
vocative—frequent direct addresses, questions, and challenges to the
listener-reader—again emphasizing the oral character of his commu-
nication.3 Another intriguing fact is that, as a truth-seeker who empha-
sizes the God without form or quality (nirguṇ), he repeatedly tells us
that the ultimate experience of reality is in a sound, one that is pro-
foundly different from those we ordinarily hear, yet still sound—the
anahad nād, often translated as “unstruck sound,” but more closely ren-
dered as “boundless sound.”4
In 2002, after studying well-known written collections of Kabir for
some years, I plunged into the living oral/musical tradition. The first
metaphors to arise from that experience were aquatic. I lost my moor-
ings in that ocean. Or was it a river? Solid lines of print turned into
multiple streams, swirling currents. Surging with the exhilaration of
music, I was thrilled one day to hear my experience echoed in the words
of a Kabir song: Laharī anahad uṭhe ghaṭ bhītar—“Boundless waves are
Introduction 3
rising in my body.” The word for waves, laharī, meant the ones we find
in water, but the word for boundless, anahad, also suggested waves
of sound.
Kabir traditions have been alive and transforming since he composed
orally nearly six centuries ago. Most scholars of Kabir think it likely
that he never wrote.5 His words lived in his own lifetime and afterward
largely through the voices of people who sang and said them, made
meaning out of them and changed them. This realization, which was
literally fleshed out during my first few months on the road with Kabir
singers, gave rise to an axiom in my mind: to know Kabir, you should
know people. The axiom soon expanded to include the places and cir-
cumstances in which people meet. I carried on imaginary conversations
with you, my reader. You should try immersing yourself in the experi-
ence of a place and its worlds of meaning, discovering the relationships
of texts, foods, social organization, music, weather. I want to give you an
inkling of how much you are missing if you don’t hear the music; if you
don’t take (or at least imagine taking) a series of conveyances, packed in
closely with local people, over roads, rails, and trails, through heat, cold,
and rain, to arrive in places where you sit on the ground or in chairs,
where you listen, watch, discuss, take part in rituals, eat and drink; and
where all this is what it means to know Kabir. I want you to consider
that you may get your best insights into the meaning of a poem while
you are humming it.
Entering oral tradition changes the textual scholar. First, everything
changes with the simple fact that each poem is a song. As purely textual
scholars, we dealt only with words; now words and music are inseparable.
Music affects us physically and emotionally. Emotions shake up the pat-
ternings of thought. Mind and body interact. Singing is interpretation.
The meanings of the text change when we hear it sung. These are the bar-
est hints of how music affects text.
Further, in oral tradition, there is no such thing as text without con-
text. It is easy enough to ignore context when we are sitting in an office
or library, or in any sort of private chair—situations that we are condi-
tioned to believe are the “natural” places to read books.6 Actually these
contexts do influence how we make meaning, but we screen out that fact.
In performative situations, context rushes into awareness. It will not be
ignored.
A village house. A stage in the midst of a country fair where bullocks
are bought and sold. Rain dripping. Electricity failing. Moods changing,
4 Bodies of Song
emotions rising and falling as the bhajans roll along. Different groups
vying for their chance to sing. Glasses of tea, platters of dāl-bāṭī (bāṭī
being ball-shaped breads, baked amid glowing dried-cowdung-cake
coals and ashes till they come out hard on the outside and soft on
the inside, to be cracked open, doused with ghee and dipped in dāl).
Speeches, sermons, discussions, controversies. Men and women enact-
ing their gendered roles. Children pointing, giggling, crying. Calves
staring, mosquitoes biting. Cultural programs on riverbanks in small
cities. Concert stages in Bhopal and Mumbai. A village singer perform-
ing at a government officer’s house in the capital. A classical singer in
an art gallery at Delhi’s Habitat Centre with the American ambassador
in attendance.
In the academic study of religion and literature, working with written
texts is our expertise, our dharma. It is the skill in which we have been
schooled by our gurus, and which we hone and pass on to our academic
offspring. This book argues that if we want to know Kabir, we should also
engage seriously with oral traditions. As oral traditions are embodied,
we should engage with learning in the body—not just with the part of
the body that’s in the skull, but with quite a few other parts—ears, skin,
organs, feet, and so on.
Written texts have a quasi-sacred status in the humanities partly
because they are convenient. Texts hold their shape. We can xerox
them. Performances are dizzyingly varied, changing through different
times and locations. We have to go out of our way to experience them.
But in truth, Kabir is much more an oral-performative tradition than a
written one. We may ignore that for our convenience. What happens if
we don’t?
When I talk like this, some colleagues think: “Linda wants to be an
anthropologist. It’s fine if she feels compelled to change fields late in
life, but why does she have to lecture me about giving up the study
of texts?” A European scholar, hearing of my work at an early stage,
looked at me with earnest concern and asked, “Why have you aban-
doned texts?”7 In fact, I am neither abandoning texts nor encouraging
anyone else to do so. In this book we refer continually to written texts,
trying to make sense of their existence along with oral performance
and other media. I am trying to develop a method in which fieldwork
and textwork inform and change each other. Perhaps we can imagine
together a larger world of “text,” where one mode of inquiry does not
need to eclipse the other.8
Introduction 5
Who Is Kabir?
Kabir has been introduced in English before, by me among others.9 But it
must be done repeatedly, as our knowledge and our ideas about how it is
possible to imagine Kabir keep changing.
It is easy to summarize the points on which nearly everyone agrees.
Regarded as one of the great poets of Hindi literature, Kabir lived in
fifteenth-century Varanasi, North India.10 He is a revered figure in reli-
gious history, an iconoclastic mystic who bore marks of both Hindu and
Muslim traditions but refused to be identified with either. Stories about
his life come to us as legends, most of them unverifiable. He grew up in a
family of Muslim weavers and practiced the weaving craft himself.11 He is
widely believed to have had a Hindu guru, and poetry that bears his name
is full of Hindu terminology and references to Hindu beliefs and practice.
Muslim singers in India and Pakistan still sing Kabir’s verses in Sufi musi-
cal styles, their texts showing a greater frequency of Perso-Arabic vocabu-
lary. In the late sixteenth century he was adopted as one of the exemplary
devotees whose poetry was inscribed in the sacred book of the nascent
Sikh religion.12 Meanwhile some of his admirers turned him into a divine
avatar and took to worshiping him in a sect called the Kabir Panth.13 His
own poetry subverts and criticizes religious identities and institutions, but
such subversion has never stopped religions from co-opting their critics.
Kabir also has a life beyond established religions, his couplets taught to
schoolchildren all over India, his poems and songs appreciated by peo-
ple of all classes and regions. Such people may think of themselves as
religious, spiritual, secular, or atheist, but they all have their reasons for
liking Kabir.
Compositions associated with Kabir have a uniquely powerful style,
expressing his own spiritual awakening, urging others to wake up,
observing delusion in individuals and society. Kabir’s voice is direct and
anti-authoritarian. He was of a low social status, and most of his sectarian
followers belong to communities now called Dalit (the former “untouch-
ables”). His poetry has a vivid streak of social criticism, making trenchant
observations on caste prejudice, religious sectarianism, hypocrisy, arro-
gance, and violence. At the same time it is profoundly inward-looking. It
examines the nature of mind and body, points out the tangle of delusions
in which we live, and urges us to wake up and cultivate consciousness. The
imminence of death and the transiency of all things are frequently invoked.
The journey within is permeated with the imagery of yoga—its map of a
6 Bodies of Song
subtle body made of energy, lotus-centers, coursing breath-streams, sound

and light. A keyword associated with Kabir’s spiritual stance is nirguṇ—
”no quality”—indicating an ultimate reality that can’t be visualized in form
or described in language. While invoked negatively, it conveys simultane-
ously emptiness and fullness.
Scholars in Hindi, French, English, and other languages have gradu-
ally expanded our knowledge of Kabir texts and developed ever-more
sophisticated modes of literary and historical analysis. The most dis-
concerting fruit of our diligent efforts to date has been the revelation
that Kabir, like his “not-one-not-two” ultimate reality, is ungraspable.
He almost isn’t there. Never mind that we can’t pin down the details of
his biography. We can get along pretty well without the poet’s life-story,
as long as we feel safe in the consensus that he actually did exist around
the fifteenth century. But text! A scholar could howl in distress at the
absence of a stable text.
In the past, scholars have used the terms “oral” and “written” in tan-
dem, as if they existed side by side. Now we know that oral Kabir is an
ocean whose boundaries remain unmapped after nearly six hundred years
of continuous rolling, its coastlines curling unpredictably, its depths and
currents shifting. It rolls on today. Written texts have from time to time
crystallized out of it, then have been sucked back in, altered, and spewed
out again. The oral continually transforms the written, and the written
equally transforms the oral.14 The textual situation is further complicated
by newer modes of transmission such as cassettes, CDs, film, mobile
phones, and computers.
Authentic Texts?
The words of Kabir circulate in conversation and in music, among urban
and rural people at all levels of education and status. Kabir is common
property. Someone said to me: “Do the scholars who search for authentic-
ity want to take away my favorite Kabir poetry? I’d recommend throwing
away the scholars rather than the poetry.”
Vinay Dharwadker (2003) has said that “Kabir” is a community of poets
who have been pooling their creativity for centuries. That is certainly true.
So should we just relax and enjoy “Kabir,” whatever happens to come our
way? Often that is exactly what we should do. I have been doing that for
the last several years, and the quality of my life has improved dramatically.
Introduction 7
Yet I would not like to remove the tension of wanting to know who
Kabir is more particularly and more rigorously, in different social and geo-
graphical spaces, performative situations, moments in time. The methods
of investigating this question are ethnographic, textual, and historical. We
can move around South Asia today and discover what is happening in
different places and among different people. To some extent observations
in the present may shed light on how oral traditions functioned in the
past, though we must be modest in our claims. The tools of historical and
sociological research can uncover contexts: how caste, class, gender, sect,
region, language, rural-urban divides, and religious-secular differences,
along with economic and political factors, play their roles in defining
Kabir. To delve into the question of who Kabir was in the more distant past,
we must make use of dated manuscripts. But even the oldest manuscripts
provide precarious grounds on which to make claims of authenticity.
Can we even gesture toward the real Kabir? Can we make any limit-
ing statements about what he is likely to have said? Can the earliest dated
manuscripts provide clues to Kabir’s original utterances? The intellectual
atmosphere in which I presently write is charged with skepticism about
the project of searching for the phantom author.
I have the same skepticism, but also an undeniable attraction. I occa-
sionally try to dance with this phantom, inspired by the way in which
the poems of the Kabir tradition dance with the śhabda, the true Word
that can never be circumscribed by ordinary words but that is nonethe-
less real and not to be ignored. This book is largely devoted to the rela-
tively fluid oral Kabir, discovered among living performers and listeners.
In the future it would be good (for me or someone else) to revisit stable
bodies of text preserved in old manuscripts, making use of fine-grained
new research that wasn’t available when I undertook such a study over
twenty-five years ago.15 Between extensive, intimately detailed fieldwork
that follows the flowing streams of Kabir tradition on the surface today,
and vertically probing text study that delves like a tube-well toward some
imagined groundwater below (passing through subterranean pools and
channels at different levels along the way), perhaps it will be possible to
come up with a more satisfying answer to the question, “Who is Kabir?”
If representations of Kabir across time, space, social locations, textual
records, and performative moments are (for practical purposes) endless,
then pursuit of the truth about Kabir may look like a replay of Rashomon,
the classic twentieth-century artistic statement about unstoppable multi-
vocality. At the end of Kurosawa’s stunning film, one might conclude that
8 Bodies of Song
truth is inaccessible and irrelevant, and that (as one character says) the
only important question is who can tell the best story. Or one might feel
that in the maze of narratives, truth is somehow hovering, and we are still
responsible for discovering it.
Oral Tradition
Kabir is usually studied through collections of poetry attributed to him.
But he most likely did not write or read. His words, or words believed to
be his, live on in oral-performative as well as in written forms. From the
beginning his poems have been sung, spreading across the northern half
of the kite-shaped subcontinent, taking on the colors and styles of local
folk traditions, as well as entering the repertoires of classical singers. We
can’t know with any certainty what the original Kabir actually composed.
But he has a distinct profile, a flavor, a voice, which shape his identity and
importance in religious and social history.
How would our understanding of text, author, and reception change
if we took cognizance of the nature and history of oral transmission, its
interactions with written and recorded forms, and the paramount impor-
tance of context in creating the words and meanings of texts? How far can
we go in treating texts as embodied?
Letting the words rise up off the written page creates a cascade of con-
sequences for us as scholars. First we attend to the dynamics of oral tra-
ditions, the forms of recorded text with which they interact (manuscript,
print, audio, video, internet), and the conditions of performance. We dis-
cover how meanings change when music is wedded to words. All this
transforms our way of understanding text, which is a big thing. But it is not
the only thing. The words—their forms and meanings—also live in com-
munities. They are enmeshed in people’s aspirations and choices, orga-
nizations and rituals, ways of striving for power. Thus we study “Kabir”
through singers, listeners, music, performative circumstances, the fluidity
and stability of texts, communities, and the interpretations produced in
particular religious, social, and political contexts.
Studying oral tradition has proved to be much more complicated
than I suspected at the outset of the project. I have learned to separate
inquiries that are mostly concerned with text, both oral and written, from
inquiries into the experience and cognition of listeners and readers. If we
have a particular interest in the dynamics of text under oral-performative
Introduction 9
circumstances, we can immerse ourselves in those circumstances and

learn many new things about text. Such ethnographic work related to text
and performance is central to chapters 1, 2, 4, and 6. Still focusing on text,
if we want to juxtapose oral and written, we can instigate a conversation
between our ethnographic material and the history of written (and oth-
erwise fixed) texts, as in chapter 3. When it comes to theories of orality,
the task is much more daunting as it involves the receiver’s experience
and cognition. I venture into that strange land in chapter 5. The phenom-
ena to which the term “oral tradition” refers are far from clear. As Bruce
Rosenberg asks, “[D]‌o we mean orally composed, orally transmitted, or
orally performed?” (Rosenberg 1987, 75). To demarcate a domain in which
the discussion in this book will take place, I define “oral-performative” as
referring to live performance where physical bodies are interacting, and
where sound is produced by singers and heard by listeners who are present
in the same place at the same time. But that does not mean that I propose
to wall off what is “oral” from what is transmitted through other media.
Since text and context become inseparable in oral performance,
our study of oral tradition inevitably takes us to study of reception and
meaning-making. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 emphasize the presence of text
and performance in communities, turning toward the social and politi-
cal, while continuing to listen to poetry and music and to examine the
connections between inner and outer worlds. A persistent theme in the
book is the relation between the religious-spiritual and the social-political.
There is a mystic Kabir who speaks of inner sound and light, who urges
meditation, devotion, and nonattachment, who reminds us relentlessly of
death and the transitory nature of all relationships. There is a social critic
and satirist Kabir who speaks of the injustice of caste, the omnipresence
of greed, the stupidity of puffed-up authority and hypocritical religiosity.
We study how different constituencies appropriate, negotiate, and argue
about these Kabirs.
The Genesis of This Project

My work in North India over several decades has turned gradually from
the purely text-based toward reception, performance, and cultural embed-
dedness. When I first engaged with Kabir, in the late 1970s, I was inter-
ested in poetry as language, form, meaning, craft. My task was to translate
and interpret. I also studied the history of manuscript traditions in order
10 Bodies of Song
to position myself on the question of authenticity, which was compulsory

for a scholar. But even then, I was drawn to investigate the experience of
the audience, imagining the voice of the poet actively doing things to the
reader-listener. Stanley Fish’s early theory and practice of reader-response
criticism inspired me.16 Living in Varanasi while writing a dissertation on
Kabir, I also began to study the Ramlila of Ramnagar, a month-long annual
performance based on Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century poetic rendering in
Hindi of the Rāmāyaṇa epic. This took me into a complex performative
space where I was able to explore how texts live in people, beyond the cov-
ers of books.17
The Rāmāyaṇa is a long narrative. My true literary home was in short
poems, like those associated with bhakti in Indian vernaculars. Bhakti
poetry, as anyone knows who has ventured out of a classroom, is song.
It is as much music and performance as it is literature. Both fascinated
and intimidated by the prospect of plunging into music, I mulled over it
for years. Eventually this project took shape: to study Kabir oral traditions,
inevitably in musical forms. The initial plan was to survey a vast swath of
North India. Kabir oral traditions thrive throughout the Hindi heartland
(Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh) and beyond—from
Gujarat to Bengal, Punjab to Chattisgarh. I also considered going to
Pakistan, to see whether and how Kabir existed there.
Once in the field, I abandoned the plan to “cover” the northern half of
the subcontinent. Little visits to different regions, short encounters with
singers, interviews with gurus and scholars by appointment—this would
not satisfy. For one thing, each area had a different language. Dialect, one
may say—but each dialect was very different from standard Hindi and
from the other regional tongues. It took time to begin to understand the
local language. Then the musical styles were different, and the people and
situations were different. How could I connect, fluttering around like a
butterfly, checking regions off my list? A well-known Kabir couplet says
that doing one thing thoroughly is better than trying to do everything.
ek sādhe sab sādhe, sab sādhe ek jāī

mālī sīnche mūl ko, phūle phale aghāī
Do one thing fully, all is done.
Try to do all, you lose the one.
For plentiful flowers and fruit,
a gardener waters the root.
Introduction 11
Having fallen in love on the first encounter with the songs of Malwa, and
having been welcomed by a remarkable folksinger of Malwa, I decided to
settle there.
Malwa is a region with no formal borders, defined principally by language
(the Malwi dialect of Hindi), then more haphazardly by certain geographical
associations, preferences in dress, or favorite foods. Most of Malwa is in west-
ern Madhya Pradesh (M.P.), but it also extends into southeastern Rajasthan
and Gujarat. From the colorful turbans that men wear, to the dāl-bāṭī that
people eat, to the forms of their local languages and the osmosis of song texts
and melodies, this part of M.P has much in common with Rajasthan. Various
political entities have been associated with the region and with the name
Malwa over many centuries—a sixth-century kingdom, a fifteenth-century
sultanate, eighteenth-century Maratha-ruled centers of power, a set of
princely states under the British collectively known as the Malwa Agency.
Two major cities of Malwa are Indore and Ujjain. Forming a triangle
with them, about an hour’s drive from each, is a third city, which is smaller
but looms larger in the study of Kabir: Dewas. It was here that the great
classical singer, Kumar Gandharva, lived from 1948 until his death in
1992. Kumarji was extraordinary in many ways; one was the way he sang
Kabir bhajans. He brought bhajans and bhakti poetry into the classical
repertoire in an entirely new way, and he was especially famous for his
renderings of Kabir and other nirguṇ poets. He was also drawn to and
influenced by folksingers (see Hess 2009a).18
Another Dewas connection was Eklavya, the educational NGO active in
Madhya Pradesh since 1982. I had met Dr. Namvar Singh, a very promi-
nent scholar of Hindi literature, at a 1998 conference in Heidelberg cel-
ebrating the 600th anniversary of Kabir’s birth. He had urged me to meet
the people of Eklavya and to learn about the extraordinary work they had
been doing with Kabir singing groups, which had left a lasting mark on
the Kabir culture of Malwa. Eklavya’s Kabir project, carried on through
most of the 1990s, is the subject of chapter 6.
Lunyakhedi was the village of Prahlad Singh Tipanya, the singer who
opened his home, his knowledge, and the treasury of Malwa’s Kabir
music to me. It took about an hour, by bus or shared jeep-taxi, to get
from Dewas to Maksi, the nearest point to the village on a paved road.
From Dewas and Lunyakhedi, my connections gradually spread to other
villages as well as to the big city of Indore. And so I had a home in Malwa.
My longest continuous period of fieldwork was in 2002, when I spent a
total of nine months in India. Since then I have been in India once or twice
12 Bodies of Song
Figure I.1. Prahladji and group performing on stage in Bangalore, with Shabnam
Virmani. Photo by Jackson Poretta.
a year, staying about two months each year, sometimes longer. I hosted Prahlad
Singh Tipanya and his mandalī on performance tours in the United States and
Canada in 2003 and 2009. Each tour lasted two months (See Figure 1.1).
Since 2003 I have been associated with the Bangalore-based Kabir
Project, headed by filmmaker Shabnam Virmani. Shabnam’s journeys and
mine, along with those of the Kabir Project team and their extended circles
of artists and friends, have intertwined in countless ways, as the following
pages will show. Sometimes audiences of Shabnam’s work and mine aren’t
sure who has done what. (Sometimes we ourselves aren’t sure.) People may
see me in a film and think that I am a filmmaker, or they may see connec-
tions between a film by Shabnam and an article by me, and based on the
dates of publication infer that one is derived from the other. Here is what
happened. Shabnam and I bonded from our first meeting in December
2002. We recognized that we were on the same trail, excited by the same
questions, meeting the same people. She was a film and media person;
I was a writer and scholar. We became friends, mutual consultants, some-
times collaborators, often joyous traveling companions. Working full-time
on her project, Shabnam completed four feature-length films along with
Introduction 13
a rich collection of audio, video, and print products, bringing them into
public view in 2009 (see www.kabirproject.org). During that period I was
teaching full-time, with more limited time to work on the book. Besides,
I’m just slower. So the book is coming out several years later than the films.
But they were all researched and largely put together in the same period.
More than any other project in my professional life, this has been a
journey of friendship and connection. I entered deeply into the worlds
I was studying and became part of them (which included sometimes rec-
ognizing when I was separate from them). In December 2013, I came to
Malwa after finishing my book and sending it to the publisher. In gratitude
to the Kabir singing groups of Malwa, I planned an all-day function in the
city of Dewas. Many groups would sing, and I would offer gifts, food, and
appreciation. When I arrived in Lunyakhedi village, Prahlad Tipanya’s wife
Shantiji said to me, “Your work is finished, so now you won’t be coming
here any more.” I replied, “Of course I’ll be coming here. This is not a
work relationship. This is a heart relationship.” She smiled broadly and
said, “This is a heart relationship.”
Summary of Chapters
Chapter 1. “You Must Meet Prahladji!”

The book’s main themes are introduced through the story of a village
singer, Prahlad Singh Tipanya, and the story of how I entered into relation-
ship with him, his family, neighbors, friends, and the worlds of Kabir song.
Emerging from a poor Dalit family with no musical tradition, Prahladji
became an honored and beloved singer/interpreter of Kabir, constantly
performing in rural and urban spaces. I join the family (by ritually becom-
ing Prahladji’s sister), travel with him and his group, learn songs, observe
who invites him, how he relates to audiences and other singers, and the
issues that arise in his life and representation of Kabir.
Chapter 2. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First

Century: Observing Texts
We learn how texts are brought into being again and again in the matrix of
interactions between performers, audiences, media, and circumstances.
We discover how all forms of text interact dynamically across media as well
14 Bodies of Song
as across history and geography. These processes are vividly enacted in

present-day Kabir oral traditions among singers, speakers, listeners, and
readers.
Chapter 3. True Words of Kabir: Adventures

in Authenticity
Once we have seen the fluidity, immensity, and complexity of oral tradi-
tion, does the old question of authenticity have any meaning? Though
deconstruction and reception theory have undermined old-fashioned
notions of author and authenticity, more subtle and multilayered notions
are still interesting. Either “Kabir” is a vast undifferentiated mishmash of
everything ever associated with his name in the last 600 years, or some
process of clarification is possible. This chapter reflects on ways of imagin-
ing such a process. We notice various discourses of authenticity and see
where they lead.
Chapter 4. In the Jeweler’s Bazaar: Malwa’s Kabir

A collection of songs from Malwa repertoires, organized under thematic
categories that can be seen separately but that also interpenetrate each
other. Many songs are translated, discussed, and shown in performative
contexts.
Chapter 5. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First

Century: Exploring Theory
“Orality” has been central to many studies of literature, performance,
and communication since 1960, starting with landmark works such as
Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales and Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg
Galaxy. Some thinkers distinguished sharply between “oral” and “liter-
ate” and then, to support “essential” differences between orality and lit-
eracy, posited “essential” differences between the ear and the eye—views
that are no longer tenable. When we recognize the dynamic interactions
of media over time and space, can the category of oral-performative
stand? When we understand that the senses do not operate separately,
can we say anything about the differences between hearing and reading?
In the light of current neuroscience and communication studies, does
“orality” exist?
Introduction 15
Chapter 6. A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool

Is Kabir a blazing social revolutionary or a promoter of detached spiritual
quietism? Is he both? Or neither? In the 1990s Eklavya, an educational
NGO, created a platform for Kabir singers in Malwa, foregrounding the
social-political, rational, and secularist impulses in his works. They called
it a stage for singing and discussing (Kabīr bhajan evam vichār manch).
The all-night sessions that they hosted every month for eight years left
a strong mark on the Kabir culture of the area. They brought village per-
formers into dialogue with each other and with city-educated activists. The
religious/spiritual/social/political aspects of Kabir were examined and
debated. NGO workers didn’t just push their agenda on the traditional
singers but listened to and learned from them. Through all the meetings
and serious conversations, the spirit of music and the joy of singing kept
the energy flowing.
Chapter 7. Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body

We enter one major lineage of the sectarian Kabir Panth, where Kabir is
claimed as an avatar of the Supreme Being, and sect gurus are claimed as
avatars of Kabir. Their institutional structures, traditions of guru worship,
social attitudes, and uses of Kabir-attributed texts are observed. We follow
a dramatic story in which Prahlad Tipanya, introduced in the first chapter,
radicalized in his thinking in the Eklavya forum (as seen in the sixth chap-
ter), decides to become an authority figure in the Panth, taking on the role
of a mahant and guru, presiding over a controversial ritual that he helped
to criticize in the days of the forum. Through the local and personal lens
of this story, we examine processes in the history of religion: institution-
alization and iconization of a radical and charismatic figure; battles over
ownership of the “founder’s” story; uses of ritual; and tensions between
authoritarian and anti-authoritarian tendencies, between organized reli-
gion and the quest for mystical insight. We see the debates that rage over
Prahladji’s decision among his family and peers, his own grappling with
the situation, and the surprising outcome.19
Chapter 8. Political/Spiritual Kabir

In this concluding essay on the theme of political and spiritual, which
has threaded through the whole book, we review the tendency to split
16 Bodies of Song
Kabir along political/spiritual lines and the convictions that lead differ-
ent people to valorize one side and reject the other, or to try embracing
both. The scope widens to include urban intellectuals, activists, and artists.
We cite debates in ancient India about social responsibility as opposed to
world renunciation. The story of Lenin’s conversation with Gorky about
Beethoven’s Appassionata, and a reply in the form of the 2006 German
movie, The Lives of Others, sharpens and contemporizes the discussion.
Can too much music, too much beauty and bliss, wreck your revolution-
ary spirit? Does turning inward make you forget the harsh realities of
our world? If you use Kabir’s social messages for your own purposes and
push the spiritual ones away with distaste, are you enacting a crude and
misguided political appropriation? What do music, spiritual practice, and
self-knowledge have to do with politics? What is at stake in asking and
answering these questions?
Arguments
A major argument that emerges from these chapters is for more embod-
ied study—in research and in the classroom—of literature that lives in
performance. I have read articles about North Indian poetry that had “per-
formance” or “oral tradition” in the title but turned out to consist of close
readings of texts in which the authors merely looked for verbal markers
of orality. This book argues that to know Kabir, you should know people,
places, and times. You should use your ears, voice, nose, and skin as well
as more cerebral capacities. You should appreciate the local in perfor-
mance, starting with the first location: your own body.
Even while arguing for the richness and particularity of place, I see the
substance of “the local” growing thinner. Cassettes and CDs take Malwi folk
tunes to other parts of India and beyond. The grandly tolerant oral tradi-
tion welcomes film tunes, qawwālī or ghazal styles. A producer in Bhopal
convinces a singer to make a video CD and illustrates the songs onscreen in
low-grade Hindi film style: garishly flashing “divine” lights, waterfalls, and
women dancing. My friend Shabnam Virmani, documenting in video and
audio the content and styles of different regions, brings artists of Malwa,
Kutch, Rajasthan, and Pakistan into contact with each other. They start to
sing and even to record each other’s material. I play a role in the globalizing
process—not only by engaging with Kabir singers, devotees, and admirers
in Malwa but also by taking the leading folksinger of the region and his
group on U.S. tours.
Introduction 17
Particular chapters have their own arguments. Chapter 2 proposes that

distinct versions of Kabir can be identified by locating textual and cultural
ecoregions. Along with familiar variables like the presence of manuscript
traditions and the marks of regional languages, we can inquire into matters
that reveal themselves through performance. For example, what religious
and sectarian traditions tend to rub shoulders in a particular area? How do
Kabir texts therefore become inflected with the language of the Nath Yogis
or the Sufis, and how does Kabir the poet sometimes become interchange-
able with the poets of those traditions? Chapter 5 argues that despite the
complexity of multiple mediations, it is still possible to speak meaning-
fully of oral-performative texts and experiences. Chapter 6 demonstrates
that oral interpretation by singers can take an honored place along with
published exegeses by scholars and religious pandits. Chapter 7 reveals
the contentious encounters of sectarian and nonsectarian claims to owner-
ship of Kabir.
Embrace
mil lyo mil lyo re, bhāī mhārā mil lyo
lambī bāṇh pasār, ab ke bichhuryā re sadho kad milāngā jī
Embrace, embrace, my brother,
stretch out your arms and embrace.
Once we’re parted, seeker,
when will we meet again?
A. K. Ramanujan and I got together three weeks before his utterly

unexpected and greatly lamented death in 1993. The poet-scholar-
translator-folklorist-classicist of Kannada, Tamil, and English had come
to Berkeley for some lectures. He called me on arrival, and I asked if
he’d like to drive to some scenic place, or go to a performance. No, he
replied, he didn’t care to see a play or a regional park. More and more,
he had come to realize, what he wanted to do was simply to spend time
with friends. That statement has lingered with me in the years that fol-
lowed. Though he was only thirteen years older, I always considered
him vastly my senior, my greatest model and inspiration for undertak-
ing to translate Indian bhakti poetry. Now well past the age he was at
that last meeting, I feel his statement about friends is also mine. To me,
this doesn’t mean that we would rather be with our friends than do our
18 Bodies of Song
work. It means that the people we work with can be our friends. Our
movements between professional and personal, America and India, text
and field, work and leisure, art and intellect, can trace a network of
warm human feeling that becomes, increasingly, the constant in all our
activities.
This brings me to a final thesis that I am trying to prove only to
myself. It is that scholarship can be an act of love, that the war between
head and heart can finally be undeclared in the territory of my own
body. Actually, I believe that this thesis is relevant to understanding
Kabir, that Kabir would like us to understand it and will shed light on it.
“Head and heart” here correlate with certain other pairs, such as outside
and inside, social and individual, objective and subjective, two and one.
Let us proceed.
1
“You Must Meet Prahladji!”
“You must meet Prahladji.” This is what people kept saying when
I announced my interest in doing a project on Kabir oral traditions. So
in January 2000 my friend Jeanne Fleming and I took off on a scouting
expedition to Prahladji’s village in the Malwa region of western Madhya
Pradesh. Ashok Vajpeyi in Delhi had mentioned Prahladji and referred
us to the Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad (Tribal and Folk Art Institute) in
Bhopal.1 Kapil Tiwari, the director of the institute, graciously received us
and offered help. Many fruitless phone calls on a Saturday morning culmi-
nated in a successful contact, and we were finally off in our rented white
Ambassador taxi. It was a long day’s adventure. Four hours’ travel from
Bhopal brought us to the little market town of Maksi, where Prahladji
and various members of his family met us. He had a flashing smile, wavy
gray hair, an immediate warmth. Though time was short he insisted that
we take a walk through the weekly market, which was in full swing. We
threaded our way through lanes crowded with merchants and customers.
Jeanne bought a pair of pointed leather shoes. Then we followed his jeep
(our immaculate elderly taxi driver visibly tense) over fields and rutted
lanes to Lunyakhedi village, ten minutes away.
For us the village on that occasion was just his low-roofed house, white-
washed and bluewashed; his two brothers’ nearby houses; two cows with
calves; some buffaloes; and an assortment of men, women, and children
who seemed to be mostly of his family. It was already 5 p.m. They spread
mats along the blue wall. Everybody in sight sat down to listen. The men
who were going to make music donned red and yellow turbans—garb
that I associated with the neighboring state of Rajasthan. They arranged
themselves, Prahladji in the middle with his tambūrā, a long-necked,
20 Bodies of Song
five-stringed instrument, held and strummed with one hand. Slipped over
the fingers of the other hand were kartāl, two flat-edged wood and metal
objects struck together to make a tambourine-like sound. Next to him sat
his brother Ashok, who would sing in unison with him. Then one man
on dholak (a two-headed drum perched on his lap), one on harmonium,
one on violin, others with small cymbals or bells. Under the open sky, they
started singing. I loved it.
Prahladji explained the sequence in Hindi and responded to my
questions. There was homage to the guru, then a joyful mangalgīt (aus-
picious song) of welcome, songs about inner yogic experience, admoni-
tions about death, and songs in Kabir’s paradoxical style called ulaṭbāṃsī
(“upside-down language”). The imagery was from villagers’ lives: a bullock
cart with painted wheels, a bird flying from forest to forest, a deer eating
up the crops, a woman crying for her dead husband. It was also from the
nirguṇ spiritual tradition: a subtle voice ringing within the body, a burst
of light, a wound from the arrow of the guru’s Word. This was without a
doubt the Kabir I had encountered in written traditions that had developed
in the northeastern Hindi region, around Varanasi. But it also had a dis-
tinct taste that came from the western soil and air of Malwa.
The melodies were lovely, captivating, upbeat, with patterns in verse
and refrain that were repetitious but for me never monotonous. The male
voices were full-throated and clear. Both brothers closed their eyes and
seemed to sing to their instruments, to each other, to themselves. The
percussion—drums, cymbals, bells—penetrated the body and made it
dance even when it seemed to be sitting still. Music had that power, as I
(the hitherto impoverished scholar of the printed page) was just beginning
to discover: it lit up the nodes and highways of the body, made inside and
outside one, began to erase the boundaries between bodies. Opaque flesh
became subtle. Our personal outlines were no longer heavy but vibrated
together with the strum of the strings, the drumming and ringing, and the
human voice, sometimes running and playing, sometimes held on a long,
clear note. (See Figure 1.1)
As they sang, the broad blue sky turned inky; a crescent moon rose over
the roof and hung directly above the singing group. The audience expanded
as shadowy figures slipped in. Someone lit a fire. After about an hour, it
stopped. Prahladji suddenly rose with a smile, introduced some “parties”
of singers who had come from nearby villages, and went off to see about
dinner. We listened to samples from other singing groups until called
inside. In the first room we saw many photos of Prahladji in performance
“You Must Meet Prahladji!” 21
Figure 1.1. Prahladji sings with his younger brother Ashok. Photo by Kedar Desai.
and in the company of distinguished people. There were two posters of

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the great twentieth-century leader of the movement
of “untouchables” for liberation from caste oppression. Couplets of Kabir
were painted on the walls. Seated on the floor of the next room, we were
served a vegetarian meal. Then we went back to the room with the photos,
now crowded with family and neighbors. Prahladji presented me with a
bunch of his commercially recorded cassettes. I presented him with a copy
of my book on Kabir and an American flashlight. The feeling was warm,
the energy high. There was the illusion of knowing each other well. He
said, “You have come into our lives today, we have done all this. When you
leave, will you ever come back? Will we ever meet again? Nobody knows!”
We boarded our taxi and drove off into the night.
It took two years for us to meet again. After that the connection was for
life. At least that’s the way it feels.
In this and subsequent chapters, I will introduce Prahladji as I gradu-
ally came to know him: his life story, his family, his beginning as a singer
and his growing performative activities, his involvement with religious
sects, his interpretations of Kabir’s words, and his movement toward
being a guru as well as a singer. We will see his orbit grow from village
22 Bodies of Song
to region and then become national; eventually we will witness the begin-
ning of his globalization. We will also be introduced to what he sings and
how this singing is part of the social, religious, economic, and political
networks of Malwa. Other singers will enter the story. We will see how
Kabir is produced among them.
Telling the stories of Prahladji and others is important because it is
also a way of telling the story of Kabir. Kabir lives in singers and listeners,
social contexts, and personal histories. Innumerable stories of Kabir could
thus be told, mediated through people living in India and Pakistan today.
I will tell only a few. Throughout these accounts, we will keep remember-
ing the songs of Kabir that they continue to sing. Unfortunately we can’t
hear their music in the pages of a book. We’ll have to make do with words
of Kabir, and not even the Hindi words they sing, just English translations.
If you are inspired, find a way to listen!
On the Road
Oh bird, my brother, why do you wander
from forest to forest?
Oh bird, my brother, why do you stray
In the city of your body is the holy name.
In your own green garden is the sacred sound.2
In January 2002 I returned to India, ready to plunge into the oral tradi-
tion. Worried about having been out of touch with Prahladji for two years,
I went once more to the Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad in the state capital of
Bhopal to ask director Kapil Tiwari to help me in contacting him and find-
ing my way to his village. “You are lucky,” he said. “Tipanyaji is singing
tonight in Bhopal.”3 That evening at the prestigious Bharat Bhavan audi-
torium, where he and two other folk artists were performing, I saw him
for the first time as a public figure. He was shining. White dhotī, white
kurtā, white swathe of hair streaked with grey, white teeth that I couldn’t
help noticing because of the bright and frequent smile. After the program,
when he came out and chatted with the audience, someone asked what
I was doing there. “I’ve come to learn from him,” I said immediately. He
smiled slightly and gazed downward. The facial expression spoke modesty,
but the body remained large. He was used to this, to his own magnetism.
He didn’t shrink from it.
Prahladji was born in 1954 in a poor rural family, their caste numbered
among the former “untouchables.” The family had nothing to do with
Kabir or with music. These things he stumbled on in his mid-twenties.
The sound of the tambūrā attracted him, so he started learning to play it in
1978. Then he took up bhajan singing because that’s what people did when
they played the tambūrā. The people who were teaching him happened to
sing Kabir. Some of them belonged to the Kabir Panth, the sect devoted to
Kabir, which has many members among the lower castes in Malwa.4 Kabir
intrigued and attracted Prahladji. Though he sometimes sang bhajans of
Mirabai and Singaji (a popular bhakti poet of Madhya Pradesh), or bha-
jans praising the deified hero Ramdev, he became increasingly devoted
to Kabir.
When a group says, “We sing Kabir,” they might equally say, “We
sing nirguṇ.” Nirguṇ is a theological term that refers to a notion of God
beyond form and attributes, contrasted with saguṇ, which refers to God
as represented in concrete forms, having incarnations, icons, and stories.
The famous bhakti poets of North India from the fourteenth through sev-
enteenth centuries tended to be associated with either nirguṇ or saguṇ
approaches to the divine, though the two weren’t sharply separated. Nirguṇ
carries its own styles and themes. Kabir is the preeminent nirguṇ poet of
the North. Prahladji often says, “I sing only Kabir.” But in fact the signa-
ture lines of a number of other nirguṇ poets appear in the bhajans that
his mandalī and others in Malwa sing. It is understood that they are the
planets to Kabir’s sun.5
Bhajan mandalīs, or groups that get together to sing devotional songs,
are present in nearly every village. They may sing nirguṇ or saguṇ or a
combination of both. They may consist of men or women (one rarely sees
a mixed group). The Kabir mandalīs of Malwa are almost exclusively male.6
Groups that stay together for a while usually collect a few instruments: a
tambūrā, the five-stringed instrument that migrated to this part of Malwa
from Rajasthan; a dholak, or two-headed drum; small cymbals and bells;
eventually perhaps a harmonium, the box-shaped, hand-pumped keyboard
that combines attributes of a piano and an accordion. Recently the violin
has become fairly common, along with the timkī, a pair of small drums
hit with sticks and sometimes called bāngo (from the English word for the
originally Afro-Cuban bongo drums).
Bhajan mandalīs are popular as much for the joy and release of singing
as for the religious content of the songs. They are one of the ways in which
cultural knowledge—poetry, philosophy, morality, devotional feeling and
24 Bodies of Song
practice, observations about work, society, and business, and insights into
the nature of self and purpose of life—sinks in, seemingly without effort,
but with cumulative depth and elaboration. Most mandalīs go no farther
than the houses or neighborhood hangouts where they get together. Some
are asked to sing at local functions, family events, holidays, or religious
rituals. After sitting with such mandalīs for a while, Prahladji became the
leader of one. His group started getting invitations to little events. Through
the 1980s, his popularity as a singer grew among the local villages. In 1992
he was discovered by Kapil Tiwari, an influential cultural leader in Bhopal
who is devoted to encouraging folk artists and making their voices heard.
(We will hear from him in depth in c hapter 3.) Tiwari was impressed with
his voice and spirit. Now there were invitations to bigger places, including
the state capital.
In the early 1990s another development brought the Kabir bhajan
mandalīs of Malwa together in an unusual way. Eklavya, an NGO that does
educational work in Madhya Pradesh and beyond, organized a series of
monthly Kabir singing sessions, along with other activities, which went
on for eight years. The Kabir bhajan evam vichār manch—a “platform for
singing and discussing Kabir”—generated a great deal of activity and
reflection and left a strong mark on the Kabir culture of the area.7 (We
will refer to this program as the manch in ongoing discussions.) Prahladji
was very active in the manch, as were Narayanji, Kaluramji, and others
who will come forth more fully in c hapter 6. At the beginning they were
all just sāthīs, companions in singing and playing, who shared similar
backgrounds, family experiences, and work lives. But as the decade went
on, Prahladji was becoming more of a stage performer. As an artist, he
was offered money for singing. His cassettes, which entered the market
in 1993, took off. He became very busy, combining singing engagements
with his job as a teacher in a government school. He bought a car.
By the time I reached Malwa in 2002, he was in constant demand. His
village had no telephone lines, but he had installed a small solar tower that
hooked up to a phone that worked—sometimes. When the cells weren’t
dead, it rang a lot. Despite his growing reputation among city people,
most of the calls were for programs in villages and small rural towns. They
wanted him for their annual market-fair, for Shivaratri celebrations, for
the inauguration of a college, for a Kabir Panth function. Or they were
organizing a program especially for him. He seemed to always say yes.
I started traveling with the group. Between February and August of that
year, I went on more than twenty trips with them, often staying overnight
on the road and in the family’s village home between trips. That was my
real initiation into oral Kabir. In the rest of this chapter, I will write about
Prahladji and our adventures together—sometimes through straight bio-
graphical narrative, sometimes through his own words, and sometimes
through excerpts from journals I kept on the road.
“We’re finally off at 3,” I wrote one day when we were supposed to leave
by 1 p.m. to make it on time to an 8:30 concert. Inset passages in this sec-
tion are from my notebooks.
Prahladji keeps passing in and out of the house, saying, “Don’t make
us late,” but he’s the one who isn’t ready. At last the instruments
and bags are jammed into the Mahindra (a big jeep-like vehicle),
as are the seven of us. Some boys push us down a mild slope: the
starter rarely works. Prahladji exclaims Satguru! Satyanām!, a cus-
tomary benediction, as we set out. We bump along the dirt road
that leads to Maksi, then turn onto the paved but potholed nar-
row highway. As we pick up speed, the mood lightens. Prahladji
is humming. Someone slips one of their own cassettes into the
player.
If you come from the dome of the sky,

if you’ve given up your head,
then what have you to fear?
Stay alert, the guru is always before you!
If your mind is clear,
what have you to fear?
Ashok’s arm rests lightly on Gokul’s shoulder. There’s an air of

warm camaraderie, easy laughter—at least till we all get deadened
by our cramped positions and the cratered road. It’s a man’s world,
but I have a special pass. Here we go.
My journals from February through July 2002 swarm with accounts of

trips with “the band.” (Yes, I am thinking of myself as a groupie traveling
with my favorite band, something I didn’t manage to do during my youth
in the 1960s.) There were trips to huge Kabir Panth convocations, to tiny
villages, to pilgrimage centers, and to events I could never have dreamed
of, like the bailoṇ kā melā, the Bullock Fair, where they say 100,000 bull-
ocks (along with random camels and horses) are for sale, each attended by
a gaggle of humans.
26 Bodies of Song
March 9, 2002
The Anjali Literary Society of Nemavar, on the holy Narmada
River, presents its annual program associated with the Pānch Koshī
Yātrā—the pilgrimage of five kosh—about a ten-mile walking trip.
Introductory speeches start at 9 and go on nearly 2.5 hours. They all
keep referring to Tipanyaji’s wonderful singing, but he doesn’t get to
sing till after 11:30 p.m. The women are leaving in droves because it’s
too late for them. Lots of men have also left, but thousands remain.
P. [Prahladji] is always bringing his audience back to themselves.
“It’s great, you’re here for the Pānch Koshī journey, but first do the
journey within yourself. A pilgrimage is good, but make yourself
ready for it, worthy of it. Otherwise it’s useless. The swan and the
heron look the same, but they are very different.”8
March 24, 2002
Two ways of reacting to the foreign lady who is writing on Kabir.
1. The Literary Society of Nemavar puts me on the stage, garlands

me, and proclaims the international importance of the event.
2. Mangal Das, mahant of the Kabir Panth ashram in Dewas,
says: “Writing a book doesn’t mean you understand Kabir. A crimi-
nal can write a book too.” So true!
April 18, 2002

The wind comes through the windows like a hot bath. We’re on the
road again! The starter worked. Great. And the horn is under control,
doesn’t go off randomly as it did on the last trip. But there’s a new
problem: the car is overheating. An hour into the trip they’ve poured
all the extra water into the steaming hole, but to no avail. A duct con-
nected to the radiator is broken. We’re stuck three hours away from
the program, which is supposed to begin in three hours.
We sit in a tiny town where they have relatives. P. has gone back to
Maksi try to get another car. Finally we arrive at the concert site hours late.
It’s a big fair for the Navaratri festival. The audience quickly regroups.
99% are men, a sea of white kurtās with pink, orange, yellow, and red
turbans bobbing on top. After a ceremonious half-hour of bestowing gar-
lands, lighting a lamp, and praising the artist, the singing starts. There’s
a terrible din coming from nearby loudspeakers that have nothing to do
with our show. I hate it, but Prahladji seems unperturbed.
He always says that when we recognize paramātmā (the supreme
being) as the same in everyone, then we see no one as Hindu or
Muslim, high or low caste, Indian or foreign. Today this serves as
introduction to a series of sākhīs that feature Muslim vocabulary, fol-
lowed by a delightful song asserting that everything, even improbable
and funny things, are nothing but God. It’s a fast rollicking song
which I identify by its most frequently repeated phrase, tū kā tū, “You,
only you.”
Hey wise wanderer, what’s the secret?
Just live your life well.
In this world flowers, branches—
wherever I look,
you, only you.
An elephant is you in elephant form,
an ant is just a little you. As elephant driver
you sit on top. The one who holds the goad
is you, only you.
With thieves you become a thief,
you’re among the outlaws too.
You rob someone and run away.
The cop who nabs the thief is you,
only you.
With givers you become a giver,
you’re among the paupers too.
As a beggar you go begging.
The donor is you,
only you.
In man and woman you shine the same,
Who in this world would call them two?
A baby arrives and starts to cry.
The babysitter is you,
only you.
In earth, ocean,
every creature, you alone
shine forth. Wherever I look,
only you.
Kabir says, listen seekers,
You’ve found the guru
right here, right now!
Now well into the program, the original audience has shrunk, but the
attention is better. A guy in the front row sucks on a country pipe and
gets a chilling look of disapproval from Prahladji. Still the pipe is being
passed.
28 Bodies of Song
April 19, 2002, 6 a.m.

We change cars again after a rough night. We were stuck at a truck stop
for hours, getting something fixed, and took turns sleeping in a small
space in the luggage compartment. Prahladji gives me a glance, then
there’s a little burst of laughter. It’s funny. The big red ball of sun is
climbing up over the horizon, as it was climbing down on the outward
journey. Ashok puts on the Dhanya Kabīr tape, loud. This is the life.
March 10, 2002
I travel with these guys like a Deadhead, to fairs and holy places, rest-
ing on the floor with pilgrims, going by car, train, or bus, sharing
space and facilities with everyone, washing clothes on the spot, sleep-
ing amidst the blare of loudspeakers, listening to them perform at all
hours. After a few days or a week of that, I check into a good hotel,
send my clothes to be washed and ironed, pay for hot running water,
space and silence, a private flush toilet. Collecting my thoughts, writ-
ing, sending and receiving emails.
In Dewas’s most luxurious accommodation, the Srishti Club. Was
dropped off here at 6:30 a.m. by the car in which we’d been driving for
hours. A startling contrast from the life of village and pilgrimage. They
all walked in and inspected everything—wide lawns, swimming pool, my
light-filled room, which could house a village family. I felt embarrassed.
Becoming a Kabir Singer

Prahladji was born in that same Lunyakhedi village where I first met him,
and where he lives now. But he didn’t stay there long. At the age of about
three he was sent to live with his Nana and Nani (maternal grandparents)
in the village of Manpur, about fifty kilometers away. Why did they let their
firstborn son go so far away? He just says, “My Nana had no sons, and my
mother was his only daughter.” A girl born before him had died. A boy born
after him, and eventually two more girls, also died. His younger brothers
Ambaram and Ashok and his sister Gita survived. They struggled economi-
cally. Like most rural people of their caste, they worked on others’ land, and
income was unreliable. Both parents were illiterate. His father was virtually
a bonded laborer, working other people’s land in return for food, housing,
and a tiny monthly stipend that was paid only once a year. He worked thirty
years like that. Why did so many kids die? They had no medical resources.
As we discuss this, Prahladji and Ambaram pull up their shirts and show
me burn scars. That used to be the cure for illness. They burned them
around the stomach with hot clay or iron. “It worked!” he says. I don’t
believe it. “You have to believe it,” he says with a grin. “I’m alive.”
Their caste is Balai—a scheduled or Dalit caste, meaning one of those

formerly deemed untouchable (also referred to locally as Harijan and
Mālvī). Prahladji doesn’t like to associate himself with any caste label.
Once we went to the inauguration of a new house in the nearby city of
Dewas. The house owner, a friend, had asked him to sing a few songs at
the function. When we all sat down on the ground in rows to be served a
meal (a sensitive moment for people who are queasy about intercaste din-
ing), someone asked him outright: “What’s your jātī?” Jātī means caste,
but also race or species. He answered without missing a beat: mānav
jātī—the human race.
When Ram plays inside you,

that’s wisdom.
Parrots can repeat a mantra,
mynahs can recite the Veda.
Without a guru
you’ll stay confused. . . .
The Brahmin is clay, the Vaishya clay,
the whole creation clay.
In this clay, everyone mingles.
That’s Kabir’s message.9
Balais are an important Dalit caste in Malwa. Ranked relatively

high among the low, they have tended to be upwardly mobile in recent
decades.10 But to many upper-caste Hindus, they are still very low.
Practices and attitudes tied to untouchability are not uncommon (though
they are illegal). Lunyakhedi is a two-caste village of about 500 residents,
all either Brahmin or “Harijan” (the term used when the village layout
was first described to me). It has two distinct sections, each filled with
members of one of these groups. In between is an open space that takes
a few minutes to walk across. I have crossed that space only about three
times in ten years.
Prahladji’s move to his grandparents’ house had huge consequences
for his future. They placed a high value on education, and he went
much farther in his studies than the children who stayed in his home
village. Manpur also provided a more socially progressive environment.
Untouchability was little in evidence, whereas in Lunyakhedi Dalits were
not allowed to enter the temple, and Brahmins objected if a Dalit added
“Singh” to his name as “Singh” is associated with high-status kśhatriyā
castes. Prahladji’s formal name is Prahlad Singh Tipanya. He changed
30 Bodies of Song
his little brother’s name from Kashiram to Ashok when the younger boy
started school, explaining that Kashiram was “not a good name”—no
doubt because it was recognizable as a Dalit name. Ambaram studied
up to fifth standard. Ashok, the youngest, completed twelfth. Gita, their
sister, stopped after fifth. But Prahladji was encouraged to study. “My
grandmother,” he recalls with emotion in his voice, “used to sit with me
while I studied at night. She kept me company until I went to sleep.”
After twelfth he began his B.Sc., a postsecondary diploma in science. But
that was interrupted by a job opportunity. Eventually, through correspon-
dence courses, he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master’s
degree in history—unprecedented in his family. He got a job as a teacher
in a government school—a coveted position because of its security. His
first job was located far off the paved road. He walked thirteen kilometers
from the road to the village, holding his sandals in his hand during the
monsoon because the mud was so thick. It took two-and-a-half hours
each way.
His grandparents were religious in conventional Hindu ways, doing
rituals and fasts in which Prahladji participated. Nani was devoted to
Ramdevji, a deified saint of Rajasthan popular with both Hindus and
Muslims, and having a large following from lower castes. They all ate
meat. Nana took alcoholic drinks, and so did Prahladji as a young man.
Kabir meant nothing to them. Like most children in North Indian pub-
lic schools, Prahladji had to memorize sākhīs (couplets) of Kabir in
school: “Five sākhīs, ten marks,” he recalls. In the early 1970s he became
a vegetarian and stopped drinking alcohol; a few years later he gave
up tea.
Prahlad was thirteen and Shanti was eleven when they got married.
They didn’t live together for a long time after that. Between 1972 and
1974, during college vacations, he came home and worked as a laborer.
He said he had helped to dig nearly 200 wells. After finishing the
first year of his postsecondary science course in Mhow, he was hired
as a teacher and spent a year in training. In 1975 he began his first
full-fledged teaching assignment in the village of Kathbaroda, where he
lived separately for twelve years with his little brother Ashok. Ashok had
his first eight years of school there. Prahladji likes to remind me that
he did all the cooking during that period, since I’m fond of pointing out
how the men and boys in the house now sit around playing carom and
watching TV, not lifting a finger while the women cook, serve, wash,
and clean.
[PT]11 In one of the villages where I stayed, they used to sing bhajans
all night. I’d complain to my mother—what is this nonsense? Do
they have a stomach ache that keeps them up all night? They don’t
sleep, and they don’t let me sleep. I can’t even study. Now people
probably complain that way about me! (He laughs.)
One day there was a purnimā (full moon) program for Ramdevji
in Gorkhedi village. I went along with some other teachers. There
were a lot of programs like that. That was when I heard the tambūrā
for the first time. It was around 1978. The sound of the strings hit
me really hard. That vibration, that brrrrrrr, went inside my body.
I thought, wow, I should learn this. I had heard dholak and har-
monium and never felt like learning them. But with the tambūrā
I felt an ache, a pang. People don’t all get wounded by the same
arrow. Some are struck by a bhajan’s words. I was wounded by the
tambūrā’s strings.12
I left my posting in Kathbaroda, got transferred to Gorkhedi
so I could learn to play the tambūrā. A man called Kakur-da
taught me every day. I learned quickly because of my concentra-
tion [lagan]. I played morning and night and learned from him
every day.
Prahladji’s wife Shantiji later told us that he made a tambūrā

himself—cut down a tree and carved it out, wounding his thigh with an
ax in the process.
[PT] People used to get together at night to sing bhajans. They told
me I’d learn faster if I sang and played at the same time. I said okay,
write out a bhajan for me and I’ll sing.
Prahladji recalls the first Kabir bhajan he learned. He just wrote down
the words to help him improve his tambūrā playing, but later he paid more
attention and was deeply affected. He says this song turned his life around.
Its imagery came from farming and the common plants and animals of
the countryside.
[PT] “Oh mind, plow your fields in such a way / that you don’t cause
pain to the bullocks.” People always beat their bullocks, so there was
that feeling in the bhajan. Then it talked about the semal tree. Its
flower looks very attractive, but there’s nothing inside.13
32 Bodies of Song
I remembered encountering the semal while translating Kabir some

twenty-five years earlier—about the same time that Prahladji was learning
this bhajan. Semal is translated as “silk-cotton” tree. Birds are attracted
to its big red blooms, but when they peck into the flower they are disap-
pointed by the dry, inedible cottony strands that fall out of it.
[PT] The bhajan also said, ausar khet meṇ bīj mat boye, don’t plant seeds
in a barren field. And there was another verse about haṃsa and bagulā,
swan and crane. They look the same but the haṃsa eats pearls; the
bagulā keeps a sharp eye out, and when it gets the chance grabs a fish.14
So don’t be attracted by outer form. See the way a person behaves. At
first I just sang the song, but later I started to think about what it
meant. I thought I should look behind the outer form of the song, see
what deep things Kabir is saying. I went through different levels of
understanding. After hearing the lines about semal, I went to see the
semal flower and saw that it was true, the flower is useless.
Here Prahladji inserts a Kabir sākhī to emphasize his point. Conversations

about Kabir are often punctuated by sākhīs (see Schomer 1987).
[PT] baḍā huā to kyā huā, jaise per kazūr, / panthī kī chhāyā nahīṇ,
phal lāge ati dūr.
You’re big? So what?

The date palm’s big, yet it gives
no shade to the traveler, and its fruits
are out of reach.
Don’t be attracted to something just because of looks. On the physi-

cal level, you might get entranced by some woman’s beauty, but you
shouldn’t leave your own home, pulled by desire and sensuality. On
the spiritual level, there are so many fruitless, barren tendencies in
yourself. Change them, make them fruitful!
I heard this sākhī:
gāyā bin pāyā nahi, anagāvan se dūr / jin gāyā vishvās se, sāheb hāl hazūr
You won’t reach it without singing / if you don’t sing, it’s far.
But when you sing with deep feeling, / Saheb is right where you are!
Hey, who is this sāheb? I didn’t even know who sāheb was! Someone
said sāheb is paramātmā, the supreme being. I got the idea that if
you want to meet paramātmā, you should learn how to sing with
sincere feeling. Before this I thought paramātmā was out there
somewhere, separate. I’d have to go out and get him (laughs). Now
I know that he’s in me and everyone. There’s no separate God, it’s
just a matter of connecting.
To change my inner tendencies, to convert them from bar-
ren to fruitful, I decided to immerse myself in singing and play-
ing. I learned quickly. Soon I was singing on All India Radio and
Doordarshan television. And we were traveling all over.
Prahladji took initation (dikśhā), almost casually it seems, in several

nirguṇ sects: first the Nath Panth in Gorkhedi village, where he learned
the tambūrā; then the Radhasoami Satsang in the big city of Indore;
then the Parakhi Kabir Panth, led by Abhilash Das in Allahabad; then
the Damakheda-based lineage of the Kabir Panth (see c hapter 7). Taking
dikśhā means receiving a mantra from a guru or a local mahant who has
authority from the central sect, and assenting to some principles about
God and proper conduct. At the top of the list of proper behaviors is swear-
ing off meat, eggs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Reverence for and service to the
guru are also enjoined. The mantra consists of one or more divine names.
In nirguṇ devotion, these names are understood to refer to a supreme
being beyond form. Even if Vaishnav names (like Ram, Govind, Hari) are
used, they are not supposed to suggest the concrete forms of Ram and
Krishna and their many popular stories. As mantras, they are charged,
potent sounds that can evoke an inner experience. All such names are
encompassed in more general terms like nām (name) and śhabda (word)
that refer to a sound that is both internal and cosmic. The devotee should
practice sumiran (also spelled smaran, simran), remembering or retaining
awareness. This may be understood as continuous awareness of the name
or as formal practice of repeating the name. The formal practice, called
jap, is often done with a mālā or string of beads, counting one repetition
to each bead.
Why did Prahladji keep trying new sects? I thought there must be an
important reason, but he didn’t find the question very interesting. The
Nath Panth guru just asked, “Do you drink liquor? Do you eat meat?”
The answer was no. “Fine, then you can join.” So he joined. Later some-
body said the top guru of Radhasoami was coming to Indore for the sect’s
34 Bodies of Song
grand annual function (see Juergensmeyer 1991; Bhattacharya 1996). In

Radhasoami the head of the sect gives mass dikśhā at such gatherings.
Prahladji and his friends said, chalo, let’s go and take the name. Then there
was a Kabir Panthi sant, Purushottamdas, who wanted to initiate him. “I
already took the name in Radhasoami,” said Prahladji. “Never mind,” said
the sant, “it’s all the same.” So he took it again. All these sects had in com-
mon the worship of a nirguṇ God, reverence for the guru, insistence on
“pure” food and drink, and constant reference to the name or the word
as opening the door to a liberating experience. Prahladji told me that the
Kabir Panth was the last stop: he didn’t plan to join any more sects. But
later I found out that he had taken dikśhā from at least three different Kabir
Panth gurus. Eventually our conversations revealed much more about his
deepening understanding of “guru” over the years.15
Prahladji went on explaining how he explored the meaning of bhajans
in those early years of learning to sing. He took a practical approach to
mysterious utterances:
[PT] If you get the secret, you can see my country.

Veda and Quran can’t reach its border,
beyond speaking and hearing.
What was that secret? I kept thinking about it.
A guru, a wise one, listens—

a voice vibrates in the sky,
subtle, very subtle.
I thought maybe it was about the sound of rain in the sky. But then,
Kabir-sahib always talks about looking within—
man mathurā dil dvāraka, kāyā kāśhi jān

das dvāre kā pinjarā, yā meṇ jot pahachān
Know mind as Mathura, heart as Dwarka, body as Kashi.
This cage of ten doors: recognize the light here.
Mathura, Dwarka, Kashi—people keep running to these pilgrim-

age places. But the cage of ten doors is the body. So he must be
talking about a voice in your body. I decided to find out if the
voice is there or not. So I started to meditate. In the evenings
I made my food, said the Kabir Panthi evening prayers, did some
reading, and then meditated. After sitting down, I didn’t know
how long I stayed there. One hour, two hours, four. At first my
legs hurt, I got pins and needles in my feet, but that gradually
got better. I was sitting, but my mind still wandered—school,
home, games, all kinds of things. Then I realized why people
do sumiran—to stop the mind from wandering. You have to
get some control over that mental activity. It takes time for the
sound to come. I realized you shouldn’t eat too much. What you
eat affects your body. So for three years I didn’t eat any dinner,
just had one meal a day, so I could meditate. Even then it’s not
enough. You can sit still, close your eyes, reduce your eating, give
up other things. But behind closed eyes, you’re seeing things.
Your mind keeps going. That’s the subtle part.
moṭī māyā sab taje, jhīnī tajī na jāī

pīr paigambar auliyā, jhīnī sab ko khāī
jhīnī māyā jin tajī, moṭī gae bilāy
aise jan ke nikaṭ se, sab dukh gae hirāy
Everyone gives up gross illusion, no one gives up the subtle.
Masters, prophets, and priests—the subtle ate them all.
If you give up subtle illusion, the gross goes by itself.
That’s the way folks get far from sorrow.
After some time I realized that what I’d heard about the voice was
true, it’s really there. That voice, that melody, is in everyone, initi-
ated or not, Hindu or Muslim or whatever. Some say it’s the sound
of blood flowing through our veins. Some say breath. But only that
sound can get your mind really centered. Nothing else—not pil-
grimage, fasting, temples, rituals, recitation. If your mind is there,
it can’t be here. They’re all outside. This is inside.
khel is brahmānḍ kā piṇḍ meṇ dekhiyā

See the play of the whole universe in your body.
With sound, there’s light. Both arise from the same place. Lightning
and thunder go together. After experiencing this, I had more faith
in Kabir’s bhajans.
Prahladji remembers those three years—alone except for his young,

school-going brother, living simply, doing his own cooking and cleaning,
exploring the meaning of Kabir’s bhajans within himself—as the happiest
time of his life.
36 Bodies of Song
[PT] Nowadays I’ve become a sort of lazy fellow. But the experi-
ence I had then—enough! It was lasting [sthāī]. Every human being
should have an experience like that. Once you’ve had it, it’s with you
forever. A laborer by the roadside, if he has had this experience, is
happier than anyone.
I asked how he learned to meditate. Did he have a guru? He said he

learned some things from Purushottamdas, the Kabir Panth guru from
Kharchha village for whom he had great respect. He also learned from
reading. Whatever methods he read about, he’d try out.
Inside and Outside: A Singer Makes

the Connections
We scholars need to name major themes in the expansive body of Kabir
poetry, to give ourselves pegs on which to hang our discussions. But the more
I stay among singers, the more I find the themes intertwined. Two broad cat-
egories that are almost inevitable in discussing Kabir might be called “inner”
and “outer.” There are the “spiritual” poems that speak of a profound inner
experience, a dissolution of ego, a boundless joy that seems to be matched
by boundless freedom from attachments; and there are poems of social criti-
cism and satire directed at caste, religious hypocrisy, hierarchy, violence, and
delusion (see c hapters 6 and 8 for extensive discussion of these distinctions).
Other frequently noted categories include homage to the guru; songs of the
(yogic) body; and songs of death, transiency, the urgent call to wake up.16
In Prahladji’s singing and running commentaries, however, these
threads and patterns are inextricably woven together in a larger fabric.
After listening to him, I turn to the texts in books and find them less and
less amenable to categorization. In this section, temporarily suspending
the biographical narrative, I will show how Prahladji’s way of singing and
interpreting Kabir opened out questions that I have long mulled over in
the texts, and also enabled me to understand how the texts are rooted in
his life and social world.
Inner to Outer
Prahladji’s meditation experience in the early 1980s, with its eventual revela-
tion of the continuous inner sound, the subtle voice so frequently evoked in
Kabir, is clearly crucial to his understanding of and convictions about Kabir.
The sound is represented through terms like nām/name; śhabda/word; bha-

jan/devotional song; dhūn/melody; tāl/rhythm; bājā/instrument; and particu-
lar instruments, such as flutes, drums, and sitars. Sometimes it is linked to the
breath—shvās, breath, or oham soham, yogic terms for inbreath and outbreath.
koī suntā hai guru gyānī, gagan meṇ āvāz hove jhīnā jhīnā
oham soham bājā re bāje, trikuṭī shabad nishānī. . .
sab ghat puran bolī rahā hai, alakh purush nirbānī
The guru, the wise one, listens:
in the sky a voice, subtle, so subtle.
Inbreath, outbreath, the instrument plays,
the word, a sign at the point
where three streams meet.
He speaks completely in every body,
the unseen, unspoken person.17
***
sunn mahal meṇ bājā bāje, kingarī ben sitārā

jo chaḍh dekhe gagan gufā meṇ, darsegā agam apārā
In the palace of emptiness an instrument plays—

lute, flute, sitar.
One who climbs
to the cave in the sky
will see
what’s deathless, boundless.18
***
śhunya śhikhar par anahad bāje

rāg chhattīs sunāūngā
On the peak of emptiness

the boundless sound resounds
there I’ll sing
all thirty-six ragas.19
***
laharī anahad uṭhe ghaṭ bhītar, phailī rahā chaho pherī,

re divāne lāgī shabad dhun gaharī, re divāne lāgī bhajan dhun gaharī . . .
38 Bodies of Song
ulṭā baṇ gagan jaī lāgā, vāṇ bich hai ek dairī

uni dairī mere mālik virājai, vahāṇ par lāgī lau merī
uni dairī meṇ aisā bājā bāje, bājī rahā āṭho paharī
mardang tāl pakhāvaj bāje murlī bāje ghaṇī gaharī
Boundless waves arise in my body, spreading in all directions.

Oh mad one, you’ve been hit by the word, the deep melody,
oh mad one, you’ve been hit by the song, the deep melody.
An arrow turns backwards to strike the sky,
in the middle is a space
a space where my master splendidly shines
where all my love gathers
in that space instruments play,
they play night and day, the drums keep rhythm,
the flute plays, it is so deep,
boundless waves arise in my body.20
The last two passages above use the key word anahad. It literally
means “boundless” and in this context implies the term anahad nād—a
very old concept in Indian cosmology, yoga, and music. Nād (nāda in
Sanskrit transliteration) means “sound.” Not just any sound, but primor-
dial sound, the very first evolute in the process of creation, a sound that,
although it is the source of all sounds perceived by our sense organs,
is yet utterly unlike them. This uncanny difference is expressed by the
anti-commonsense term “unstruck sound”—the usual translation of
anahad nād.21
Now, starting with Prahladji’s reported experience of an inner sound,
which he discovered as a young man investigating whether the words
of Kabir’s bhajans were true, then lingering with examples of how the
bhajans describe or hint at such a sound, we might find it reasonable to
propose that this represents the interior Kabir, the mystic, the sādhak or
spiritual practitioner. If there are any grounds for separating his spiritual
from his social-political poetry, there will be no question about which side
of the divide these verses belong on.
But Prahladji leaps directly from the anahad nād to social equal-
ity, the folly of claiming superiority on the basis of caste, class, religion,
sect, nation, and so on. In a heartbeat, he links up those deeply interior,
extremely subtle, notoriously difficult-to-attain states of spiritual exalta-
tion to songs satirizing Hindu and Muslim bigots and phonies, arrogant
Brahmins, foolish Mullahs, clueless pilgrims, and myopic yogis. How

does he make that leap?
He is able to do it because that unbroken, always immediately avail-
able sound, that ungraspable, luminous, formless form of divinity, resides
exactly in the body, and in every body. Countless Kabir poems carry as a
central metaphor the ghat, the clay pot, ubiquitous in rural Indian life, and
standing for the human body.
kaī dhūnḍhtī phiro mhārī helī, mat bhāgti phiro mhārī helī
ghaṭ ghaṭ meṇ rāmjī bole rī, par ghaṭ meṇ piyājī bole rī,
kaī hertī phiro mhārī helī
My dear friend, what are you seeking? Why are you wandering?
In every body, Ramji speaks! In every body, the beloved speaks!
My dear, what are you seeking? Where are you running?
I would hazard the claim that, if one could examine the widely vary-
ing representations of Kabir across history, geography, and social forma-
tions, this theme would be central to all. The fundamental reality you are
looking for is within you, right in your own body. You’re a fool when you
exhaust yourself looking for it outside. And all those others are fools and
possibly scoundrels when they tell you to look for the truth in temples and
mosques, rituals and scriptures, sacred rivers and mountains, beads and
costumes, statues, and their own high and mighty expertise.
kahāṇ se āyā, kahāṇ jāoge, khabar karo apne tan kī

koī satguru mile to bhed batāvai, khul jāve antar khiḍkī
hindū muslim donoṇ bhulāne, khaṭpaṭ māhi riyā aṭakī
jogī jangam śhekh sevarā, lālach māhi riyā bhaṭakī . . .
Where did you come from? Where are you going?
Get the news from your own body!
A true teacher can show you the secret.
The window within will open.
Hindus, Muslims, both deluded, always fighting.
Yogis, sheikhs, wandering Jains,
all of them lost in greed.
The song is satirical, laying on Kabir’s characteristic equal-opportunity

critique of religious hypocrites and idiots. But in the repeated refrain, we
40 Bodies of Song
are reminded of the inner world, the source of knowledge that gives us
the conviction to excoriate their deluded attitudes: to find out who you
really are, where you came from and where you’re going, don’t turn to the
idiot-experts. Rather, get the news from your own body. Open the window
within. A true teacher can help you see this, but not a phony one. And
beware: the phonies are all around.22
Prahladji never ceases to remind his listeners that our true home (nij
ghar) is in our bodies. In this clay pot, everything is revealed. Most inti-
mately, our home is in the uninterrupted subtle sound (also associated
with light) that is present in everyone equally. We don’t have to search for
it; we just have to open to it, to let the stream of our awareness join with it.
No song expresses this more beautifully than “Yā ghaṭ bhītar”:
Who can know this? The one who knows!

Without a teacher, the world is blind.
In this body forests and hamlets, right here mountains and trees
In this body gardens and groves, right here the one who waters them
In this body gold and silver, right here the market spread out
In this body diamonds and pearls, right here the one who tests them
In this body seven oceans, right here rivers and streams
In this body moon and sun, right here a million stars
In this body lightning flashing, right here brilliance bursting
In this body the unstruck sound roaring, streams of nectar pouring
In this body the three worlds, right here the one who made them
Kabir says, listen seekers: right here my own teacher.
Without a teacher, the world is blind.23
Light in the Body: Nirguṇ and Caste

Kabir says,
what have you lost?
What do you seek?
The blind don’t see.
Brilliance gleams
in your body.24
David Lorenzen (1996) has argued that the nirguṇ sects that took
shape in early modern North India, in contrast with saguṇ Vaishnav
traditions, tend to be associated with radical social thought; in particu-
lar, they criticize the caste system, attack ideas of purity and pollution,
and preach absolute equality. A number of nirguṇ sects were founded
or inspired by low-caste “saints” and have continued to attract follow-
ers largely from low-status groups.25 Although Vaishnav traditions also
assert that all are equal before the Lord and that true devotion obliter-
ates all other considerations including caste, the Vaishnav sampradāys
have been more ambivalent on this point with a greater tendency to
maintain caste ideology and practices.26
I agree with Lorenzen that nirguṇ bhakti has a special appeal to stig-
matized and oppressed groups, and that it is linked to rejection of caste.
Lorenzen points out that the nirguṇ God is omnipresent—an inherently
egalitarian notion. But I am doubtful about his comparison of Kabir’s
nirguṇ bhakti to Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy: “If everything
is grounded in Brahman, and the physical world is in some basic sense
illusory, then the differences between human bodies, between Brahmin
and Shudra, are also finally illusory” (1996, 29). I would not resort to
the illusory nature of the material world to explain the egalitarianism
and the powerful sense of human dignity associated with Kabir’s nirguṇ
bhakti. Such an interpretation would undercut the real-world potency
of Kabir’s social critique (a critique that is conspicuously absent in phi-
losophers like Shankara). The explanation is more down-to-earth. In
Kabir, the human body does not evaporate into Advaitin illusion. Its
clay is continually invoked, held up as the precious container of the
most precious reality, the place where we experience freedom, joy, the
end of fear. The divine as sound reverberates through that clay pot with
its subtle channels and lotuses; the divine as light illuminates the space
within and beyond that vessel. At the same time, the clay is mere dust
when the life goes out of it. Always the same in every pot, this clay
makes us equal in birth, life, and death. In some verses we find the poet
explicitly diverging from the path of renunciation—the ideal of sannyās,
abandoning familial and social ties, that reigns supreme in Shankara’s
Advaitin sects. Here the garden refers to the everyday (worldly) world,
that of the nonrenouncer.
sadhū aisā chāhiye, dukhe dukhāve nāhi

pan phūl chheḍe nahīṇ, par rahe bāg ke māhi.
42 Bodies of Song
The kind of holy man we need

doesn’t suffer or cause others pain
doesn’t disturb leaves or flowers
but stays in the garden.
A more practical factor that creates a strong attraction between nirguṇ

and the oppressed castes is this: saguṇ bhakti requires physical images
of divine beings. Those images are consecrated and housed in temples,
and the guardians of those temples are Brahmin priests. The priests and
images are claimed by the regime of caste purity. Only the priest can touch
the statue, only the priest can pronounce the sacred Sanskrit syllables,
conduct the rituals, hand back the blessed prasād to the worshiper. The
sacred image must never be desecrated by an impure touch. Thus we can
safely guess that in 99 percent of Hindu temples there is no such thing
as a woman priest (who would be subject to monthly impurity), no such
thing as a non-Brahmin priest.27 This regime of purity is responsible for
“untouchables” being excluded from Hindu temples over a history that
goes back thousands of years. Not only have they not been allowed in the
door, but they have often not been allowed to walk on the street in front of
the temple.
Postindependence India has seen major changes around the practice of
untouchability, beginning with the declaration of its illegality in the con-
stitution. Many temples have ceased to discriminate against worshipers
on the basis of caste. But if you ask Dalits whether untouchability has
disappeared in the villages, they will laugh at you. In recounting his his-
tory, Prahladji pointed out that his childhood move from Lunyakhedi to
Manpur presaged a better life for him, because in the former Dalits were
still excluded from temple entry, but not in the latter. When he sings a
song that criticizes faith in statues, we detect an extra bite in the words.
First, there is the basic delusion that God is to be sought outside oneself.
Second, there is the bitter collective memory of being treated as tainted,
unfit to approach that exalted statue. In a song that emphasizes the con-
stant presence and immediate availability of the divine in the body, one
stanza describes, by contrast, the lifeless statue in the temple that is zeal-
ously guarded by a priest:
My dear friend, what are you seeking? Why are you wandering?
In every body, Ramji speaks! In every body, the beloved speaks!
My dear friend, what are you seeking? Where are you running?
A sculpted statue stands in the temple.

Its mouth never speaks.
The priest stands at the door.
Who can enter without his order?
Another song more aggressively asserts the superiority of the

“unformed god,” anagaḍhiyā deva, which means the god who is not fash-
ioned by anyone’s hand.
God without form, who will serve you?

Everyone runs to the solid form.
Nonstop they jump to serve it.
That full being, that indivisible lord,
no one knows its mystery.
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva,
have scum on their heads.28
Don’t put your faith in them,
they haven’t found liberation.29
Niranjan and the avatars,
they’re not really ours,
all stuck with the fruits of karma.
The maker is somebody else.
Yogis, ascetics, renouncers,
they all fight with each other.
cross over with the Word.
God without form, who will serve you?
Focusing attention on caste suddenly sheds light on other lines that

I haven’t considered in terms of caste before. The phrase nirmal hot sharīr
wafts through my mind: “the body becomes pure.” The whole sākhī (cou-
plet) goes like this:
The guru lives in Banaras, the disciple at the ocean’s shore.

When the guru’s quality comes forth, the body becomes pure.
I think of a series of examples in which the Word (śhabda, always a

sign of the nirguṇ reality), or the light in the body, or the breath, or the
44 Bodies of Song
song, conveys instant purity. Sometimes it is the satguru whose arrival

purifies—the true guru who, Prahladji often says, is not any individual but
is that very presence which radiates and resonates in every body.
satguru āngan āyā, gangā gomatī nahāyā

merī nirmal ho gayī kāyā, maiṇ vārī jāūṇ re
When the true guru enters my courtyard,
I’ve bathed in Ganga and Gomati,
my body has become pure.
I offer myself completely.
Prahladji is sensitive to the feelings and beliefs of others. I have heard

him temper the fierce tenor of songs like Anagaḍhiyā deva by saying that
Kabir was not attacking temples or mosques but was criticizing the com-
mon ways of misunderstanding them. Temples can be good, he would say;
they are a place to focus your attention, to become calm, to let go of your
pride and confusion. Similarly rituals can be good, a way to bring people
together in a good atmosphere, for a good purpose. But, he would always
conclude, they are for the beginning stages of our journey. Kabir’s profound
teaching takes us far beyond the need for temples or external forms.30
Sometimes when I describe myself as a nirguṇ devotee, people respond
by saying that nirguṇ is for intellectuals; it is abstract, devoid of emotion.
They ask rhetorically: How can you love a God beyond form, beyond words,
beyond everything? I disagree with this characterization of nirguṇ. A God
who is not anywhere becomes a God who is everywhere. If you withdraw
the special divine energy from the temple image, it immediately suffuses
the human form and the whole world. As Prahladji sings in a bhajan often
heard at the beginning of a concert: ek akhandit nāth charāchar dhāve—one
indivisible lord courses through all animate and inanimate beings.
Some saguṇ devotees also understand God this way. But the insistence
on sanctified forms, spaces, and stories tends to pull in another direction.
At least to Dalits who have been excluded from holy places and barred from
approaching holy objects, there is a manifest link between saguṇ institutions
and their own oppression. The liberating potential of nirguṇ is undeniable.31
[From my notebook] August 2, 2002

When I reached the village at 7 p.m., something unusual was going
on. Lots of men were standing in two clumps—one group in front
of P’s house, the other on a field nearby. It turned out that Brahmins
from the other part of the village were trying to set up a cremation
ground practically in front of Prahladji’s house, near the low-caste
part of the village and far from their own houses. The people here
were opposing it. I questioned Prahladji and his elder son Ajay.
Linda Hess (LH): Are there other more distant spots where they
could have their cremation ground, where the smoke of burning
bodies wouldn’t blow into people’s houses?
Ajay: There are plenty of spaces available.
LH: Then why do they want to do it right here?
Ajay: Just to push us down. It’s caste exploitation.
LH to Prahladji (PT): Is it entirely about caste, or is it against you
personally?
PT: It’s about caste, but they also don’t like the fact that so many
people come to see me. You come, and many other people come,
all the time. They think, “Why do people respect him so much?
We’re Brahmins, people should respect us.” They are jealous.
They want to put us in our places.
The Collector was called to settle the dispute. After listening to both sides,
he decided that the burning ground should be located at a distance, not in
front of any houses.
December 23, 2002

Yesterday Ashok donated blood for a Brahmin girl who is pregnant and
who has developed a blood problem. He says her blood has “become like
water.” She accepted the blood. But her family still practices untouch-
ability. They would not want to take food or water from Ashok, or to
touch him, or to have his family’s water vessels in the well they use.
Outer to Inner
Just as Prahladji transitions seamlessly from spiritual to political in com-
menting on a single bhajan, the movement from social commentary into
the heart of inner experience is less like switching gears and more like
subtly shifting between foreground and background. I will illustrate that
move with a conversation in one of Shabnam Virmani’s films.
As explained in the introduction, Shabnam is a Bangalore-based film-
maker who arrived in Malwa in December 2002 to start research for a film
series on the same subject matter I had been immersed in throughout that
46 Bodies of Song
year—Kabir’s presence and meanings in contemporary South Asia, espe-

cially approached through music. We met and had a great time moving
through the countryside and meeting singers for a few days. In the years
to come, we would become close friends and collaborators.
In the film Chalo hamārā des/Come to My Country, Prahladji has a bril-
liant riff on form and no-form, moving from comments on religious hypoc-
risy to examination of the very structures of our minds. He spins it out
from the idea of a ghāt, the built-up space on a riverbank with a stairway
and leveled area, which allows people to approach the water, to bathe and
do rituals, as well as to perform everyday activities like washing clothes. It
is a place where people draw water—an activity that can bring forth caste
prejudice, as the “upper” castes have historically tried to keep the “lower”
away from their water supply. This discussion takes place on a train headed
for Varanasi (or Banaras), Kabir’s hometown, famous for its ghāṭs along
the holy river Ganga. Shabnam is shooting with the camera while two sari
merchants of Varanasi strike up a conversation with Prahladji.
Merchant: In Banaras, there are always ritual recitations of holy texts

going on. All the major spiritual leaders have come there. . . . Huge
crowds gather.
Prahladji (PT): And nothing changes. I’ve noticed that in India we have
the most temples, the most holy places, the maximum sermonizers,
the largest number of devotees, and also the most scoundrels, doing
every kind of shady activity. . . . Yesterday I sang the song “Why search
in temples?” Some may feel this is an attack on temples, but it’s not.
Temples are merely places [that can support] the first stage to stilling
your mind. It’s just a medium. Once that’s done, you can go to a temple
or sit at home, or sit in a jungle, or even sit here. Right now, we could
think we’re in our temple. But we think we’re sitting in a train.
Shabnam Virmani (SV): There’s a sākhī you sing—
All draw water from the riverbank.

No one draws where there’s no bank.
Kabir’s bank is no-bank.
One who draws there becomes pure.
What is this aughāṭ ghāṭ, “no-bank bank”?

PT: Ghāṭs are steps on the riverside. They’re separated. Hindu ghāṭ,
Muslim ghāṭ, a ghāṭ for upper castes, one for lower castes. We use ghāṭs
to draw water, but also to get knowledge, to attain something. These
frameworks are also ghāṭs. A ghāṭ on a river is to bathe. But he has

a sari shop. That too is a ghāṭ. It’s the place where we’ll get what it
can offer.
Merchant (smiling): Yes, like Scindia Ghat, Raj Ghat [naming well known
ghāṭs of Banaras].
PT: Those are only for bathing. Ghāṭs are also for attaining something.
Ghāṭ means a place that’s defined. . . . Different people have their own
ghāṭs. So Kabir says, “All draw water from the riverbank,/No one draws
where there’ s no bank.” Very few draw from a place where there’s no
ghāṭ. “Kabir’s bank is no-bank. One who draws there becomes pure.”
A ghāṭ will trap you within a boundary. If someone sells Banarasi saris,
that’s all you’ll get there. Other saris you won’t get. So you’ll get defined
by that framework.
Merchant: At my shop if you ask for a South Indian sari, I won’t have it!
PT: So you remain identified within boundaries. Boundaries are not
only of caste, religion, and sect. Boundaries are also of knowledge,
art, sensory desires, gender. All these create bounded frameworks.
If I think I’m a great singer, I get trapped in that identity. Someone
says, “I am an expert.” He’s bound by that. But for a state of sponta-
neous simplicity [sahajtā—one of Kabir’s words for being fully awake
and aware] all these bounded identities have to dissolve. We alone
can release ourselves from these limits. For instance [to Shabnam],
you’re holding on to the camera. The camera is not holding on to
you. The camera did not say, “Hold me.” You chose to hold it. So
you’re tied to it. Whatever our attachments may be, we’ve shackled
ourselves to them.
Saṃsārā
When I reached the village house in January 2002, I was confused. It
wasn’t the house I remembered from the first visit, two years before.
Where was that modest dwelling, white on one side and blue on the
other, with bright handprints on the wall beside the door? Our car drove
up in the dark and stopped at a much more imposing structure, some-
thing with a tall roof, a fenced yard, and steps leading up to a wide veran-
dah. “Hey, this isn’t it,” I murmured. But it was. Prahladji had built a
new house. It had two big rooms on the ground, with more construc-
tion in progress on an upper floor. The old house, a few steps away, was
little used.
48 Bodies of Song
Go now, you who lived

without a guru, oh yes.
Now you praise the body?
Now you sing its glory?
You built a palace, swan,
but couldn’t stay there, oh yes.
You cut the grass,
you wove the roof, oh yes.
Where did he go, the king
of this town? Oh yes.
You built a balcony
on walls of sand, oh yes.
You loved what’s worthless, then a knife
took your life, oh yes.
You scattered beds and pillows
in that brilliant palace, oh yes.
Your body has to burn one day
on a pile of wood, oh yes.
Kabir says, do you want to live

for ages, oh yes?
Then burn all your attachments,
drink the ashes, oh yes.32
Prahladji faces the daunting challenge of living up to the teachings of

Kabir, with whom he is deeply identified and whose words he expounds
from the stage, while remaining a worldly man. I use “worldly” in the
Indian sense—saṃsārik, married, earning, looking after a large extended
family, dealing with money and property, sometimes entering the corridors
of power, constantly traveling and performing to audiences that number in
the thousands, and maintaining his job as a schoolteacher. In Kabir culture,
one often hears the juxtaposition karanī-kathanī: deeds and words. Like the
contemporary American expression “walking the talk,” it refers to a stan-
dard of consistency between professed values and actions, and it implies
criticism of inconsistency. While Prahladji sings of the illusory nature of
bright-colored palaces, his own house grows. He creates an institution with
a long name, the Kabīr Smārak Sevā aur Shodh Sansthān: Kabir Memorial
Institute for Service and Research. The institute also requires buildings.
In 1998 the state of Madhya Pradesh gave him one hectare of land, later
augmented by 1.5 hectares more, to build an institute dedicated to Kabir.
The person largely responsible for this was then Chief Minister Digvijay
Singh, who, along with others in Bhopal, had been moved by Prahladji’s
singing. Digvijay also personally admired Kabir and was building a politi-
cal identity in which concern for Dalit issues figured prominently. Some
of the Brahmins in the village resented this lavish state gift. “They were
burning,” Prahladji told me. “Even now they think: Why is he getting all
this? Why does he think he’s so great?”
On my first visit in early 2000, there was nothing on the land but a
vertical monument whose shapes symbolized aspects of Kabir’s teaching.
Since then structures have been added every year: a lovely little white tem-
ple with open walls and Kabir sākhīs painted around the roof-rim, a couple
of concrete platforms on either side of the temple, a hall with one big
room, an open area with pillars and a roof, a row of toilets for big events,
cisterns for storing water. By 2011, there was a new wing with four upstairs
guest rooms, and a spacious schoolroom downstairs for the school he had
always dreamed of opening.
Prahladji hosts an annual public function that features bhajan pro-
grams, discourses by visiting Kabir Panth gurus, and a chief guest, often
from the political world. The first year, the chief guest was Digvijay Singh,
chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. He landed in the field in a helicop-
ter. An estimated 50,000 people attended on that occasion, and a like
number showed up again a year later when the chief guest was Acharya
Prakashmuni Nam Sahab the head of the Chhattisgarh-based Kabir Panth,
who has hundreds of thousands of followers.
Every time I returned to Malwa, there were new structures. The main
house kept growing, its amenities ever improving. A garage housed a trac-
tor and the car. The Mahindra, afflicted by premature old age because of
heavy use, was replaced by a sparkling new Bolero in 2005, followed by a
Tata Sumo SUV in 2010.
One day I asked Sumitra, Ashok’s wife, how their situation had
changed since Prahladji became so successful. She said it had changed
a lot. Previously they were very poor. She and the others worked as field
laborers to earn a little money. The joint family had only one house (in
contrast to their present assets—three older houses and a new one, a few
motorcycles, a car, a fridge, a TV for each family, and so on). A few days
before this conversation I had gone with Prahladji and his wife Shantiji in
the car to Tarana market, fifteen kilometers away. Many greeted him as a
50 Bodies of Song
prominent man. I was introduced as the American professor here to study

Kabir. A man outside the car window said to Prahladji, “Now you are more
famous than Kabir was in his time.”
Prahladji recalls the days when they had virtually nothing. He remem-
bers working as a laborer, digging wells. His father used to work in bad
conditions, almost as a bonded laborer. “He got five rupees a month, but
they paid only once a year.” He remembers riding a bicycle in the early
1980s, carrying his wife and three children. Once it started to rain. Then
it poured. They had to stop and look for shelter. An old lady in a small
hut took them in. The moment left a deep impression on him—the old
woman’s kindness, the raw exposure of the family.33
In the mid-1980s, the mandalī used to go on foot to the places where
they had been invited to sing. Once six of them set out at night, but the
power was off, so they couldn’t make out the locations of villages. In the
pitch darkness they got lost and didn’t get to the program till 1 a.m. Some
people were still waiting to hear them. Nowadays we travel much far-
ther, and by car, but some things are still the same—like getting lost and
delayed.
[From my notebook] April 29, 2002

We drive four hours into increasingly remote places, over increas-
ingly bad roads. VERY bad roads. In the darkness, how do they
know where to turn? But as usual, they reach the destination—a
village called Pachlana—and as usual, they are late. After dinner in
a village house, we set out for the stage. Prahladji has class! Walking
through the lanes, he gleams, he is in his body, he is gracious to all.
To a man in renunciant-orange he says, “Jay gurudev, I have come
for your darśhan.” (“Homage to you, revered guru, I have come here
to be blessed by the sight of you.”) As we approach the stage, we hear
his recorded voice booming over the speakers. About 2,000 people
suddenly appear in the space that was empty a few minutes before.
People crowd around to touch his feet, and the ritual of welcom-
ing him with speeches and mālās (garlands) of orange marigolds
begins. There are multiple mālās; bestowing one on the honored
guest is an index of local prestige. As an elderly man reaches up to
garland him, he suddenly takes the garland and puts it around the
old man’s neck. He tells the audience that he is the lucky one, to be
able to get their darśhan. He asks that the electric fans, set up on
stage for the performers’ comfort, be turned off, explaining that it’s
better for all to sit together in the heat than for a few to be cool. He
begins to sing, as always praising the guru in the first piece, then
moving to a slow haunting tune about the difficulty of holding fast
to what one believes in, followed by a rousing wake-up song:
Wake up, man, wake up!

The birds have eaten your field,
you who didn’t have a guru.
Wake up now in your mind,
wake up now in your heart.
He puts his whole self into the performance, whether for impor-
tant people in Bhopal, or for me in his house, or for these villagers.
He has a mission. He wants to inspire the audience, to inculcate val-
ues. He expounds on Kabir’s meanings between songs, or between
verses within a song, while his accompanists maintain a low-
volume background of melody and rhythm with violin, harmo-
nium, cymbals.
On some of his cassettes too, he introduces each bhajan with
a short gloss on the meaning. Some have criticized him for too
much preaching. A literary man I met in Bhopal said Prahladji’s
quality had gone down since the first cassette, in which he just
sang. Now he wasn’t content with being a singer, he had to be a
guru! The Bhopal writer wasn’t impressed. I too sometimes feel the
ratio between singing and expounding gets skewed, and the com-
mentary disrupts the music. But Mr. Nirguṇe of the Adivasi Lok
Kala Parishad described Prahladji’s ability to sing and interpret as
astounding. Prahladji himself seems to need both—his presenta-
tion flows in an unbroken stream.
Two-and-a-half hours into the Pachlana concert, he takes a
break, inviting some local singers on stage. Returning, he says he’s
about to sing his last song. Instead he sings eight more. As the hour
gets later he gets funnier, drops standard Hindi and talks purely in
Malwi. Audience members crack up at his stories and one-liners,
now completely in their own idiom. When he concludes at 2:30 a.m.,
an old guy in the front row shouts, “Since you’ve come all the way here,
you could at least sing a little more.” This after five hours! (See Figure 1.2)
Nowadays the three brothers—Prahlad, Ambaram, Ashok—with their

wives, children, grandchildren, and elderly father, appear to be a loosely
52 Bodies of Song
Figure 1.2. Rural audience late at night, showing women’s and men’s sections.
Photo by Smriti Chanchani.
constituted joint family. The brothers, with their wives Shanti, Kamla,
and Sumitra, have separate houses, all within a few steps of each other.34
Though I never inquired into their economic arrangements, the three
brothers appear to be autonomous. Ashok worked on and off in a clinic
for some years, having had some training as a medical assistant. Later he
took to keeping buffaloes and cows and selling the offspring. Ambaram
works in a factory. Each family has some cattle and some land to cultivate.
Prahladji controls his own money but also shares. Children are in and out
of all the houses. When there is extraordinary expense (like illness or a
wedding) Prahladji steps in to help.
Once I made fun of Ajay, the older son, for calling his girl cousin when
his son peed in his pants, instead of cleaning the mess himself. A man is
not supposed to do anything like that, he informed me, or even be too affec-
tionate with his child, in front of his father. When I insensitively used the
word “stupid,” he came back at me strongly. “It’s not stupid, it’s our culture.
A boy is taught not to say anything to his father for years.” I backed off and
took another tack. “Sangita [his wife] works so hard, serving everybody.”
He replied, “You should know how hard the women in our family used
to work. Till about five years ago, the women would get up at 4/4:30, sweep
and clean, collect the cowdung, cook food for everyone, then go to labor all
day in fields belonging to others.”
“Did it change from the cassettes?”

“Yes, and from the performances.”
I’ve ridden on the back of Prahladji’s motorcycle through Maksi, stop-
ping to pay the electric bill and the phone bill, to do business at the bank,
to see if he had received a fax at Shakti STD. He has shown me his bud-
get for the annual Kabir function that he offers to the public—with care-
fully noted sources of funds and expenditures for food, tents, lighting,
workers, and so on. I have attended the double marriage of his son Vijay,
and Ashok’s son, Mithun, observing the comings and goings between the
grooms’ and brides’ households for many months before the event. I wit-
nessed the breakup of Vijay’s earlier engagement, as the men in the family
angrily discussed how the prospective bride’s relatives had failed to keep
their promise of giving up meat and alcohol. At a sudden medical crisis of
his daughter Sona, or Ashok’s wife Sumitra, Prahladji has jumped into the
car with other family members to drive to the hospital in Ujjain. We have
all gone to an Indore hospital on a happier occasion, the birth of Sangita’s
second child. I have been present amid countless different family moods
and encounters—from Prahladji’s imperious issuing of orders and scold-
ing of everyone in sight, to Shantiji’s fearless scolding back, to the whole
family’s ganging up and relentlessly teasing him for his foibles. In short,
he is fully ensconced in networks of domestic and economic obligations,
along with attending to responsibilities as a schoolteacher, meeting with
people of high and low stations who continually come to see him, reading
the newspapers, and discussing politics with his cronies.
Once Prahladji was nearly co-opted by the then ruling Congress Party of
Madhya Pradesh to become a politician. In the 1990s they were on the verge
of offering him a ticket as candidate for the state legislature, and he was on the
verge of accepting it. Ultimately the plan dissolved, to the relief of his family
and many well-wishers. But he continues to have the reputation of one who
is connected with the powerful: former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh
Digvijay Singh (later general secretary of the All India Congress Committee)
and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit (who held this office 1998–2013),
among others. In fact, one day he unselfconsciously linked me and Sheila
Dikshit in what I suppose would be a category of older women who are
charmed by him. “Sheilaji loves me,” he said innocently, “just like you.”
There was a moment when Prahladji made an overt attempt to get
free of his worldly entanglements. He refers to it as an “amazing event”
(adbhūt ghaṭnā) in his life. It was in 1986, long before he became so famous
and prosperous. Prahladji and his mandalī went to sing at a Kabir Panth
54 Bodies of Song
ashram in Kudarmal, now in the state of Chhattisgarh but then still part of
Madhya Pradesh. It was a modest, quiet old ashram. He recalls the troupe
being in high spirits along the way. Waiting for a connection at Bilaspur,
they sat down at an intersection near the train station and started singing
and playing. Such a crowd collected that traffic got snarled, and the police
chased them away. The ashram itself was very tranquil, and Prahladji liked
the guru. Though the ashram owned quite a spread of land, this sant lived
simply and had no pretensions. On their second day, Prahladji didn’t go to
the evening meal. He sat by himself and started singing a bhajan. And for
some reason, which he still doesn’t understand, he started weeping.
[PT] I decided, “I won’t go home.” Right there, I made up my mind.

I had never had such a thought before. I told my mandalī, “You
go home without me, I’m staying here. Tell everyone I’m not com-
ing back.” I don’t know why it happened, singing a bhajan there.
Sometime such things occur in life, such realities hit you. A place
can inspire a feeling of detachment. You feel you want to do some-
thing for humanity. So I told them all, “You go back. I’m staying
here.” Well, they were pretty upset! (He smiles, finding it funny
now.) “If you stay here, what will happen to your family?” They
argued with me a lot. I was determined to stay. It was quite a scene.
Finally the guru of the ashram told me I should go home.35
“Rural Rock Star”

This is the phrase Shabnam comes up with when introducing Prahladji
in the film Chalo hamārā des/Come to My Country. Her words, via sub-
titles, accompany footage of his arrival at a big rural concert. “I’ve been on
the road with Prahladji for a few years now,” she says. “We’re arriving in
Kithor village in Malwa, central India. Prahladji is a schoolteacher, but also
a very popular folksinger of Kabir. . .and in fact (to my urban eyes) almost
a rural rock star!” The audio switches to a voice booming from the loud-
speakers. “The King of Bhajans—respected Tipanyaji—has arrived here
with his full team. His melodious voice and Kabir songs we have heard on
TV and audio-video tapes. But this is an auspicious day. He is here in per-
son. We will listen to him and share the joy of sant Kabir’s songs.” On the
screen Prahladji, making his way toward the stage, is rushed by admirers
who touch his feet, wave a flaming āratī tray in front of him, and jostle to
put garlands around his neck.
Prahladji’s rise from ordinary participation in village mandalī culture
to megapopularity and success was steady and unstoppable, from the late
1980s onward. When Dinesh Sharma was doing research in 1990 for
Eklavya’s Kabir project (see c hapter 6), collecting information on mandalīs
in the area, he noted in his work journal: “Wherever I go, one name is
on everyone’s lips: Prahlad Singh Tipanya.” The first cassette in 1993
launched Prahladji’s success as a recording artist, which has continued
unabated through changes in media—cassette tape, audio CD, video CD.
Recognition from the metros soon followed.
Kabir devotion and singing were long established in Malwa. But par-
ticipants were used to being dismissed as inferior by the upper-caste pop-
ulation. The five-string tambūrā was a symbol of their status. Dayaram
Sarolia and an unidentified friend discuss this with Shabnam in Chalo
hamārā des:
Dayaram: In the past, if we went out carrying our tambūrā people would
recoil and say, sprinkle water here! The path has been polluted! They’d
keep away from us and not touch us.
Friend: I bought a tambūrā once from Dwarka [Gujarat]. When I stopped
at a resthouse, they refused to let me in (laughing). They said, shoo
away these beggars!
SV: So the tambūrā has this stigma?
Dayaram: Not any more!
Friend: Earlier, the youth were not into singing Kabir. Dust settled on so
many tambūrās. Thanks to Tipanyaji it got wiped away. (Virmani 2008a)
There was widespread agreement that Prahladji’s success had signifi-

cantly influenced the Kabir culture of Malwa. A number of younger men
now aspired to follow in his footsteps. They made cassettes, started giving
little commentaries on the poetry in the midst of their performances, and
were eager to meet the visitors from larger worlds who came to explore
Malwi Kabir music. One example from several who come to mind is
Bhairu Singh Chauhan, who in 2002 spoke of Prahladji as a guru. I asked
him how it all happened.
My father used to sing bhajans but I wasn’t interested. Our family

believed in Baba Ramdev. Then I went to the melā [ fair—in this case
56 Bodies of Song
the annual festival of Baba Ramdev] in Jaiselmer and started sing-

ing. Gradually singing bhajans got deeper into me. Then through
the Lord’s grace I met Sir [i.e., Prahladji, addressed respectfully as
a schoolteacher]. It’s all his blessing. We were both singing in a
program. I was like a pebble in the trash and he was the pārakh [the
expert tester of jewels who can recognize genuine value—a meta-
phor common in Kabir poetry]. He saw something there. He picked
me up and started to polish me. We developed a guru–disciple
relationship. I started making cassettes with the company that pro-
duces his cassettes, then switched to another company in Indore.
I’ve recorded cassettes of Baba Ramdev, Kabir, and Gorakhnath bha-
jans. He was singing on All India Radio, then I got a chance. He was
rated B-grade, then he went to B-high. Now I’m also B-high.
Prahladji became the object of tremendous admiration; occasionally, as

his successes multiplied, there was also some criticism and resentment.
Mostly what I heard was warm, sometimes over-the-top appreciation.
Shabnam caught the flavor of this in her films. At the annual Lunyakhedi
Kabir program in 2004, she talked to a small group of men.
1st speake.r: Kabir Sahab’s getting a lot of publicity nowadays. His value
has gone up.
SV: Emotional value or market value?
Group (laughing): No, no! Emotional value!
1st speaker: Many have sung Kabir but no one expressed it in their own
words. Our Tipanyaji did just that, and managed to connect people to
Kabir. People have been singing Kabir for eons, but it hadn’t come to
the public square.
An elderly man with a big voice and good-humored energy, who elsewhere
in the film is seen singing as he plays his sārangī, enthused:
The first one was [Kabir’s] blessed disciple Dharamdas, who looted
and devoured Kabir’s words. Second to him is only our Tipanyaji,
who appeared here in Lunyakhedi village. A third such great one,
I can’t see on this earth!
Dayaram Sarolia shared with Shabnam a song that someone had com-
posed in honor of Prahladji on the occasion of the release of his cassette “Pī le
amīras—Drink This Nectar.” The verses are first given in transliterated Hindi
to show the poetic structure. In one line Prahladji is referred to as “Sir,” the
common honorific for a schoolteacher. Each stanza is sung with repetitions.
are dhan dhan hai lunyākheḍī, dhan yahāṇ nar nārī

janme haiṇ prahlād tipānyā, kabīr bhajan gāyakārī
are bajā tambūrā satya nām kā, lagā shabda sohaṃkārī

are baje kaiseṭ yahāṇ amīras, galī galī meṇ dhūn bhārī
are amīras kaiset nikalī hai na, sar kī us ke upar batāyā hai
are baje kaiset yahāṇ amīras, galī galī meṇ dhūn bhārī
Oh blessed, blessed is Lunyakhedi, blessed all the men and

women here.
This is where Prahlad Tipanya was born, the singer of Kabir bhajans.
Oh he plays the tambura of the true name, true word, true breath.
Oh the Nectar cassette is playing, the profound melody resounds in
every lane.
Oh the Nectar cassette has come out, Sir has explained things there.
Oh the Nectar cassette is playing, the profound melody resounds in
every lane.36
Guru
[From my notebook] April 18, 2002
In today’s mail comes a densely written letter from a 25-year-old man
in Shahjapur District who heard Prahladji singing in a program.
Addressing him as Gurudev or Revered Guru, the man writes at length,
imploring P. to give him initiation. After many homages, he says:
“Gurudev Tipanya, Kabir’s low servant is at your feet.” He explains
that though he is Kabir’s servant, he lacks dikśhā (initiation). How can
he practice devotion to the name without dikśhā? “I have fallen into dark-
ness. Gurudev, will you lift up this fallen one? Will you help? . . . Like a
mother, Kabir says to me, ‘Have faith, my child. Will I let you drown in
the well? Will I let Death seize you? No, my child, I will send you to a
sant who will give you a chance to surrender yourself.’ ” He begs P. to
be his guru. He is ready to give up his family and possessions, as he
understands that “to get something you have to give up something.”
He announces that he doesn’t eat meat, drink liquor, or smoke, but
admits that he sometimes lies. He begs Gurudev again and again to
58 Bodies of Song
accept him and vows that he won’t take dikśhā from anyone else. “As
quickly as possible, please answer my letter.”
Linda (L): Will you answer?
Prahladji (P): Yes.
L: What will you say?
P: When I start to write, I’ll say whatever comes up.
L: You don’t know now what you’ll say?
P: No.
L: Have you received other letters like this?
P: Yes, often. Once a man told me he had 30,000 people in a group of
villages who would all become my disciples.
L: What did you tell him?
P: I told him that that same śhabda, that voice, that tune, is constantly
playing in all of us. They should listen to it and lead good lives.
He told this story with added details in a filmed interview with Shabnam:
Once I had a program in Dhar, got there at 9, had a meal, started sing-
ing at 10, went on till 3 or 4 in the night, then left. The people there
were very moved by the bhajans. I got a letter with many people’s
names on it. Your bhajan program was so powerful, from today we
regard you as our guru and we want to take dikśhā from you. I replied
that I don’t have that authority. If you feel I’m your guru, fine. Actually
the guru is in you yourself. Kabir-sahib says:
The seeker’s form is the guru, the guru’s form is you.
Kabir says, make it real in your thoughts, words and deeds
Take dikśhā from anyone, and keep listening to bhajans. They said
no, we are people from twelve villages, and we have all had a meeting
and decided that we will only take dikśhā from you. I said, brother,
I don’t give the name. I’m not a mahant [ritually empowered author-
ity in the sect]. In the Kabir Panth, the mahants give the name. I don’t
have that authority. So take dikśhā from anyone, and listen to bhajans.
This is the kind of faith that arises from bhajans. People come
together because of bhajans. I don’t know all these people sitting before
me, but because of bhajans, they are mine, and because of bhajans, I am
theirs. Sahib is right here. Where else is Sahib? Sahib is in everyone.
Paramātmā is in everyone. This feeling of ātmiyatā [a Hindi word for inti-
macy, made from the word ātmā, one’s spiritual essence]—this exactly is
the connection, the meeting, the dikśhā. This is what binds us together.
I liked Prahladji’s response to these people: his saying he wasn’t a guru,

his reminder that the guru is in each of them, and his recognition that in
the singing, the song, the sharing, resided their intimate meeting.
So I was surprised to hear, in the train coming home from a big

Kabir Panth melā at Bandhavgarh in April, that he had become a mahant.
Actually, this had happened at a previous melā in February, but he only
told me in April. “Surprised” is too mild a word. I was shocked. I was dis-
mayed. The first thing I blurted out was, “You’re not going to wear one of
those pointed hats!” He laughed. Of course he had received a pointed hat,
along with other items including a document setting forth his rights and
responsibilities as a mahant.37 For one thing, he would be officially autho-
rized as a guru—a function that many people had begged him to perform
for them. Prahladji and I began a series of discussions and debates that
quickly extended to his family, fellow singers, Kabir Panthis, and friends.
His decision to become a mahant proved to be quite controversial. The
nature and import of the controversy, from 2002 to a resolution in 2005,
will be examined in detail in chapter 7.
Time to Go
Don’t be proud
of your power, don’t admire
your body. The golden color
will fly, the rosy color
will fly.
This world
is a bundle of paper.
A few drops fall, it melts away.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is shrubs and sticks.
A touch of fire, it burns up.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is a patch of brambles
where you get tangled and die.
The golden color
60 Bodies of Song

will fly.
This world
is a market fair
where a fool wastes his savings.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is a glass bangle.
A little blow, it shatters.
The golden color
will fly.
Kabir says, listen seekers—

No one but you reaps the fruits
of your actions.
The golden color
will fly.
August is flying. In early September 2002, I have to fly too, back to

America and my regular life—family, job, responsibility. Perhaps like
Prahladji at Kudarmal, I feel I have been surprised by happiness here.
My body has become lighter, my mind clearer. Joy appears simpler.
Relationships need no explaining. I don’t want to go.
Two Kabir bhajans come to mind with images of flying; they are both
about transiency and death. In the first, it is the golden and rosy colors that
fly. In the second, a bird flies: the haṃsa, a swan or wild goose, the symbol
of the free human spirit, that flies off alone at the time of death. This song is
uniquely associated with Kumar Gandharva, the great classical singer who
lived in Dewas, less than an hour’s drive from Prahladji’s village. I have
never seen it in any printed collection. Kumarji discovered it embossed on
a mirror at a Nath Panth ashram in Dewas, and it inspired him to compose
a very beautiful melody. The mirror is still there to be viewed by visitors to
the Shilnath Dhuni Sansthan, which is devoted to the memory of the great
yogi Shilnath, who died in 1921 (Hess 2009a, 21; Virmani 2008c).
It will fly away alone, the swan.

What a sight: the carnival
of this world.
Like a leaf that falls from a tree—

it’s very hard for them to meet again.
Who knows where it will land
once caught by a gust of wind?
I don’t really know what to do with all the feeling that is in me.
Luckily, India provides a host of rituals and festivals to contain unruly
feelings. In August comes Raksha Bandhan, the festival celebrating the
bonds between brothers and sisters. Married sisters return, if they can,
to their natal villages to be with their brothers. If they can’t make it, they
try to send a rākhī, a colored bracelet to be tied around the brother’s
wrist. Gifts are given. It is a big celebration of family ties. Brother–sister
relationships are not only born, they are also made. It is common for
people who aren’t related by blood to declare such a relationship by
tying a rākhī. People do it for all sorts of reasons, not necessarily senti-
mental. In nearly forty years of coming to India, I have never done it.
Though some people do it quite casually, it always seemed like more
than I wanted to get into.
Among the great majority of Indians, relationships are supposed to
be clearly defined, especially between men and women. As the title of
a popular Hindi film puts it, Ham āpke haiṇ kaun?/Who am I to you?
Prahladji could only be my brother, and I his dīdī, elder sister. For the
first time, I chose to tie a rākhī. What I had fantasized as a ceremony
something like a wedding, fraught with solemn implications, turned
out to be an uproarious party with twenty or thirty people, young and
old, simultaneously tying threads, applying red powder and rice on fore-
heads, placing rupee notes on coconuts, laughing, stuffing sweets into
each other’s mouths. It was a wedding all right. I married the whole
family, all three brothers, their wives Shanti, Sumitra, and Kamla, all
the children, the old patriarch, a couple of neighbors—rākhīs, rākhīs
everywhere. And I was surprised that the ritual proved to be (as anthro-
pologists sometimes say) efficacious. My status changed. I was inside
in a different way. Everybody, including me, knew where I fit, and we
were all freer than before. Intimacy came easier. Even love could be
expressed.
62 Bodies of Song
It will fly away alone, the swan.

What a sight: the carnival
of this world.
When your time is up,

the order comes down from above.
Here come Death’s strong messengers.
You have to tangle
with Death.
Kabir sings the qualities of God

whose boundaries can’t be found.
The guru’s actions
mark his path.
The disciple’s actions
mark his path.
Kumar Gandharva’s voice soars and dips with unspeakable beauty as

he describes the flight of the swan. The voice loops like a leaf in the wind.
How can a song about death be so joyful? Though it is often said that Kabir
and other saint-poets teach us to welcome death as a consummation, the
moment when, free from the flesh, we will be united with God, I have
never embraced that interpretation. What I hear in Kumarji’s voice is the
joy of fearlessness. He flies, receiving an aerial vision of the world as a
teeming carnival, knowing himself as a leaf in the wind. God is markless,
we also are without boundaries. But our actions (regardless of status or
titles) leave traces that point to where we’re going.
With my friends at Eklavya, the educational NGO that became closely
involved with Malwa’s Kabir bhajan mandalīs in the 1990s, I organize a big
farewell event for August 31. We invite all the mandalīs in the surround-
ing countryside, distributing announcements and setting word of mouth
in motion. In the end we have thirty-five groups, to whom we provide
dinner, tea, and bus fare. Hand-painted banners at the higher secondary
school in Maksi announce the cohosts in Hindi script: Eklavya Sansthan
and Professor Linda Hess, California, America. That the singing will go on
all night is taken for granted.
I’m nervous as the crowd assembles and opening statements begin.
I fret about whether there’s enough space in the narrow hall, then run
out to check on the dinner. Syag-bhāī says I’m like a mother in charge of a
wedding.38 The rain starts early and pours prodigiously through the night,
with lanes all around us getting flooded, a truck ending up marooned
in an expanse of water nearby. Someone says the power of our bhajans

brought the rain.
I totally fail as a documenter: I don’t want to take picture or notes
and am relieved when my tape recorder refuses to work. Prahladji
reminds me that I should be snapping photos and writing things
down. He says it’s rare to have such a lot of singing groups, old and
young together, from villages all around. He’s right but I’m just not
motivated.
My memory of the night is blurred—one group after another, end-
less Kabir, endless faces and voices. As day breaks, I ask them to sing a
goodbye song for me: “Eklā mat chhoḍ jo,” the one where a woman says
to someone she loves, “Don’t leave me.” I am leaving them, but it’s the
same feeling—don’t leave me alone, I don’t want to be separated from
you. In the song we hear the voices of two characters. The woman begins
by addressing a banjārā—a romantic character, a nomadic merchant who
travels from place to place:
Don’t leave me alone, oh traveling merchant, oh traveler!

It’s about going to another country—a complicated business, my dear one.
It’s about a faraway country—a treacherous business, my dear one.
Though it isn’t clear to me which lines belong to which voice, there is

talk of a fine house with a garden and a well, which has been built by the
“master”—sāhib. Maybe the woman is pleading with the banjārā to stay
with her in that wonderful place. Maybe he is describing it to her. But
someone’s voice at the end of each stanza suggests that in the very house
where she lives, she can find what she desires so much.
My master has built a beautiful house

oh traveling merchant, oh traveler.
There’s a latticed window on top,
see the view from there, my dear one.
My master has planted a garden

The basket is piled with flowers,
string a garland there, my dear one.
My master has dug a well

It’s full, the water is deep,
bathe there, my dear one.
64 Bodies of Song
Don’t leave me alone, oh traveling merchant, oh traveler!

It’s about going to another country—a complicated business, my dear one.
It’s about a faraway country—a treacherous business, my dear one.
The song has a lovely, lilting melody. The men surround me and sing,
dozens of them, coming up with verses that I’ve never heard, repeating,
swaying with me while I cry. It goes on and on. Then we stop and take a lot
of pictures. It’s fully daylight. People disperse. I say to Prahladji, let me take a
bus to Dewas and get some sleep. He keeps laughing and saying no way, you
stay with us. Attempting to drive from Maksi to the village, we discover the
road is impassable. The downpour has breached embankments and cause-
ways, forming new lakes and closing roads. We’ll have to get out and walk.
“I told you I should have taken a bus to Dewas!” I say petulantly, lying
down on the car seat like a child. “I need to sleep and get some work done.”
“Stand up like a soldier and march,” he says. I do.
Next day in the car, as I talk of the possibility of returning in
December for a conference in Delhi and a few weeks in Malwa,
Prahladji suddenly says, “āp ke ūpar satguru kī baḍī dayā hai . . . the
Satguru has blessed you very much.”
I know what he means.
World-Renowned Artist
This chapter has been based almost entirely on experiences that happened
in 2002, my first year of fieldwork. The rest of the book incorporates trav-
els and research that continued for a decade more. To conclude the first
chapter, I offer a glimpse of what was to come.
By the end of 2002 I was a somewhat transformed person, as attested
by family and friends who had never seen me in such a sustained state of
lightness and happiness. (This was especially a shock, albeit a pleasant
one, to my husband of over twenty years.) Immersing myself in this world
of joyful music, profound meaning, and friendship in new places seemed
to have done what some of the bhajans claimed was possible: opened the
lock of my heart. In a nirguṇ variant of the great bhakti theme of viraha,
longing for the absent beloved, I deeply missed the people, the music, the
conversations, the laughter, and I plotted to get them all back.
Without my love I can’t breathe, like a fish without water.

Who can unite me with my beloved, oh friend?
I cry, I sob, my friend, the arrow of the song has pierced me!
Come to my country!
This frequently sung Malwa Kabir bhajan, with its repeated refrain,
“Come to my country,” became my theme song.39 Though I had never
organized a performance tour in my life, it all came together very quickly:
an elaborate two-month program starting in September 2003, with perfor-
mances at about thirty venues in the United States, international airfare
for five musicians provided by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations,
and domestic expenses covered by universities and others who invited
them. I arranged a hiatus in my teaching duties and stayed with them all
the way, fulfilling multiple functions—carrying tickets, managing tourist
excursions, providing pocket money, organizing food, and at the end of
the day putting on a colorful Indian outfit and appearing onstage as intro-
ducer and translator.
I flew to India in July 2003 to work on preparations for the tour.
Imagine my surprise when Prahladji told me they were taking a quick
trip to London in August, to perform in an Indian music festival. Despite
my fantasies, I alone was not responsible for their emerging international
profile. The moment had come. It was inevitable. We were all at home in
the village on the day they were to depart for their first trip abroad.
[From my notebook, July 2003]

So far it was an ordinary day. A few people had come to see Prahladji
off. Suddenly about fifty were there, and they had all crowded into
one room. The atmosphere changed palpably. There was no electric-
ity. The only light in the room was from the wicks on the pūjā tray.
Shantiji was circling it in front of him as he sat on the bed. They had
washed his feet, there were petals sprinkled on the water. A series
of bandagīs started. First his wife, then elder son and daughter-in-
law, then younger son, then disciples. Bowing to the ground, look-
ing down and up three times into his eyes.40 When it was over they
all went outside on the verandah. The water from the ceremonial
foot-washing was being distributed. A grand photo-snapping ses-
sion ensued. There was a row of chairs, with the old father in the
middle, Prahladji on one side of him, me on the other, then three
more who were going abroad. Endless flower-garlands materialized.
66 Bodies of Song
They were put on everyone who sat in the chairs of honor, but above
all on the old man, who usually spends much of the day stretched
out on his cot on the verandah. So much attention, so much excite-
ment, six garlands piled around his neck—suddenly the old man
burst out crying, and all the latent emotion in the crowd was chan-
neled through him. Layers of love, untold networks of connection
and dreams, were now almost visible in the air as the groups to
be photographed expanded and contracted. “One more, one more!”
The bonds of family, community, and the land, the vistas of green
grass and muddy water, swelled up in our chests. That old man had
been a bonded laborer. Now his sons and grandson were going to
London.
Bhairu Singh Chauhan was beaming: “This tambūrā is going to London!”

he declared to me. “This tambūrā will be on a stage in London!”
The American tour followed. Shabnam, who by that time had received
Ford Foundation support for her documentary film project, joined us for
three weeks to shoot scenes of Malwi folk Kabir’s arrival in the United
States. Eventually she produced a two-part DVD, “Ajab shahar/Wondrous
City,” that presented twelve full bhajans performed on American stages,
with charming interludes in which the Indian folk musicians and
their wildly improvising American manager (me) entered into various
wondrous situations.41 There is a crackling encounter with a college a
cappella singing group; a visit to a black gospel church; the proverbial
moment of walking through midtown Manhattan, heads craning upward;
Devnarayan, our violin player, trying out a pair of ice skates at Rockefeller
Center.
[From my notebook, various dates during the first American tour,

October–December 2003]
At home in Berkeley, when they first arrived, I offered the use of
the washing machine. They said no, we wash our own clothes. One
week later, in Los Angeles, I said, “Do you want to wash your own
clothes or use the machine?”
“Machine!” they all said in chorus.
***
Prahladji weaves in the local situation. Performing at the home of
Colorado College president Dick Celeste, he introduces a stanza
about a dog that barks itself crazy in front of a mirror: “There was
a dog—just like this little dog,” he says suddenly, pointing to the
curious Scottie just trotting past him. Explaining Chādar jhīnī, at
the verse where the washerman beats the cloth on the stone of the
Word, he says with a flashing smile: “Here everyone washes their
clothes in a machine, but there we have washermen who beat the
clothes on a stone in the river!”
***
At the North Carolina State University radio station, they appear

as guests on the weekly Indian music program Gīt Bāzār. Afroz
Taj and his broadcast partner John patter magnificently as our
musicians crowd into the tiny studio where they sing standing
up, propping instruments against counters. After they sing “Zarā
halke gāḍī hānko/Move your cart along gently,” a woman calls
up and says in Hindi, “Meṇ abhī tak kāmp rahī hūṇ”—“I’m still
trembling.”
Later Prahladji reports that an Indian in Raleigh told him that
while they were singing she felt like she was filled with light. And a
Sikh in Colorado said he cried throughout the concert.
Time rolls on. Each year I go back to India.
[From my notebook] July 29, 2007
Everything keeps changing. If I didn’t keep coming back here,
I could be content with my two- or three-year snapshot. Prahladji’s
moustache has changed shape this year. It’s gotten droopier and
longer at the ends. Every time I see it, something feels disturbed. All
the rooms in the house have changed inhabitants again. The room
where Shabnam and I used to sleep upstairs is occupied by various
women. We are downstairs sharing a room with Sangita and Ajay.
The boys who have reached their mid-teens are so tall it’s hard for
me to recognize them. Sona has a new baby. Prahladji has carried
out his years-long promise that he would move to the Smarak [the
Kabir Institute set-up about five minutes walk away, through the
fields]. Now he doesn’t sleep in the house any more. He still keeps
things in his old room. But at night he goes out to the big rough
room by the little temple.
The slightly lower moustache ends remind me of the artifice of
my book: how it pretends to represent the lives of these people but
68 Bodies of Song
actually crafts a story based on a little slice of time and on the ques-
tions and answers I hammered out then. Yet things keep changing.
In 2008, Shabnam’s four feature-length documentary films were near-

ing completion. I planned another North American tour for spring 2009,
this time bringing her along with the musicians, organizing programs that
would include film screenings and discussions as well as concerts. Once
again the Indian Council for Cultural Relations agreed to support interna-
tional travel for the musicians. Once again we had a two-month tour, start-
ing with three cities in Canada before moving through the United States.
From 2009, Shabnam’s films have been widely shown in India.
NDTV, a major cable channel, broadcast two of them and got a very
enthusiastic response. Considerable drama was generated when the
Karnataka state censor board refused to certify two films. A legal case
made its way to the High Court in Delhi, and eventually all the films
were approved without changes. In 2011 one of the films that the state
censor board had tried to suppress won a Special Jury Award in the
annual honors doled out by the national Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting. Meanwhile enthusiasm was burgeoning among urban
fans of Kabir, of Prahladji, and of other singers featured in the films.
Multiday Kabir festivals were organized in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai,
Pune, Baroda, and beyond. Artists from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan,
Gujarat, and Pakistan were appearing on the same stage, getting famil-
iar with each other’s song texts and musical styles. The ten audio CDs
produced by the Kabir Project, together with bilingual books containing
lyrics and commentaries, were circulating. Groups in Bangalore and
Mumbai called Prahladji for workshops in which they learned bhajans
and discussed meanings. Shabnam’s excellent singing resulted in her
being invited for concerts of her own. Several urban women, inspired
by Shabnam, Prahladji, and Kabir, traveled to a small town in Rajasthan
to buy their own tambūrās.
“Where is your book?” People have been asking me now for years. “I’m
a slow writer,” I reply. In 2011 a fellowship gives me nine months free of
teaching. I spend most of that time in India, writing the book.
[From my notebook] January 26, 2011, 9 a.m.

Yesterday I arrived at the village after eighteen months to discover
another huge leap in “development.” The life energy has shifted,
at least for now, to the Smarak. The grand house that I was so
surprised to encounter in 2002, and that has expanded year by year,

for the moment is in little use. Perhaps that’s because a new wing
is under construction, including a fine new bedroom and hall with
tiled floors, a bathroom area divided between bathing room and toi-
let, a new stairway leading to an extended upper floor verandah.
Construction has been dramatic since my last visit. The school
project, long a sketchy fantasy that he occasionally dabbled in, is now
moving along, encouraged by a partnership with a group of Kabir
devotees in Los Angeles. There is a beautiful classroom with bright
paintings all over the walls on the ground floor, and an upper floor fea-
turing four guest rooms, each with a private bathroom. This is incred-
ible. I slept in one of those rooms last night. In ten years, this is the
first time I could attend to natural functions in my own space, without
going outside to a shared toilet, and without needing to search for a
bucket of water. Buckets we still use, but the one in my room now is
not available to be picked up by anyone passing by in search of a con-
tainer. The building is painted bright chartreuse with magenta trim.
Some things don’t change. On winter mornings they pile up
bricks outside with a wood fire to heat a big pot of water for bath-
ing. They cluster around the fire chatting, their voices occasionally
raised in whatever is the controversy of the moment. Later they
make chapātīs on the same fire. The fields are bursting with fresh
growth—wheat, garlic, garden vegetables. Out here, away from the
main settlement, I heard strange voices at night, like babies crying,
only nonhuman. “What’s that?” I ask. Foxes.
January 27, 2011

Yesterday was a very special day. The previous evening, the news
had come: Prahladji got the Padma Shri, a huge national award
given annually to artists, writers, scholars, scientists. Eighty recipi-
ents in a nation of one billion. Hundreds of congratulatory phone
calls were coming in, and people were arriving by car and motor-
cycle to pay their respects.
At night after the visitors left, we gathered in the big lower room.
All three families were together—Ambaram and Ashok with their
wives, kids, grandkids, as well as the immediate family of PT (grow-
ing ever bigger). After a meal, mats were laid out for singing. But
instead of PT, only the young guys sang and played. He called it jok-
ingly the naklī (fake or copycat) mandalī. But the naklī mandalī was
70 Bodies of Song
great! For fun, they started with a film song that everybody enjoyed.
Then after a few Malwi Kabir bhajans, sung with full energy and
showmanship, they did a song I didn’t recognize. It had its own
spirit and histrionics. It turned out to be Muralala’s song from
Kutch, Gujarat. After that came something I couldn’t have imag-
ined in 2002—“Allah Hu,” which they had learned from Mukhtiyar
Ali of Rajasthan. Vijay, of the sweet and strong voice, had mastered
Mukhtiyar’s tune, his dramatic buildups and gestures. Ajay was
right there with him on dholak and vocals, as was Dharmendra on
harmonium. At either end were Ambaram on timkī and Ashok with
manjīrā. Everybody was having fun, including the women and girls
clustered close. The beat was intense. The younger generation was
singing a 100% Sufi Muslim qawwālī song in Lunyakhedi village.
They followed with more Kabir in Rajasthani and Kutchi folk-style.
Finally Ajay said, “Should we do Farid Ayaz?” This is the Pakistani
singer featured in Shabnam’s film “Had-anhad/Bounded-Boundless,”
a tremendous musician and showman. They took off with “Maulā
maulā lākh pukāre,” leading us all in the great rhythms, melodies,
dramatic rises and falls, pauses and gestures characteristic of Farid
Ayaz’s flamboyant performance. We ended on a high note. All this
mingling of region and religion was influenced by the Kabir Project.
A little later, from the balcony above, I see PT in white passing
fresh-picked peas around to everyone in sight, while juggling two
cell phones.
In April 2011 I attended the second Kabir Malwa Yātrā (Journey of Kabir
in Malwa)—a breathtakingly strenuous, action-packed series of events that
took place over eight days in six villages and two cities in the height of
summer, when the temperature was nearly always above 100° F. I had
missed the first one in 2010. Artists from multiple regions performed
and traveled together. A notable phenomenon was the interface of urban
and rural worlds. Two buses carried a core group that included artists,
organizers, about fifty fans from the metros, and a few stray foreigners.
Everywhere we went, we were far outnumbered by the local audiences. But
the continuous presence of those busloads of urban participants made the
mix of urban and rural cultures—of those who commonly communicated
in English and those who didn’t—particularly noticeable.
Here is one story from the grand opening day of the yātrā in Lunyakhedi
village—a story that show how Prahladji’s profile kept growing and taking
him to new worlds. Ten months earlier Prahladji had received an invitation
to perform at a birthday party for Kailash Kher—a megastar singer on stage
and in the film world. Sometimes billed as a “Sufi singer,” Kailash is not
Muslim but favors love songs that have a certain spiritual flavor, including
some from the Sufi tradition. He has a magnificent voice and a very impres-
sive way of capturing an audience—whether thousands in an open-air San
Francisco amphitheater, or a dozen at a Mumbai dinner party (I have observed
both). In 2010 someone gave Kailash the Malwa Kabir audio CDs produced
by the Kabir Project—one CD by Prahladji and one by Kaluram Bamaniya.
He reported that for three months, he listened to those two CDs nonstop in
his car. He became a great fan. His wife Sheetal decided to surprise him by
inviting the troupe to their farmhouse in Lonavala (near Mumbai) on his
birthday. They met a few more times in the following months.
Prahladji asked Kailash to come to Lunyakhedi for the opening of the
yātrā, and he did, along with Sheetal and their two-year-old son, named
Kabir. They arrived a day early and stayed under conditions that were phys-
ically difficult. Kailash joined the opening procession in nearby Maksi,
where a chariot-like vehicle equipped with loudspeakers blasted live music
produced by musicians who walked behind with microphones. Men,
women, and children crowded along, singing and dancing. In the boiling
heat, Kailash energetically sang two of his blockbuster hits to the tremen-
dous excitement of the crowds in the street. That night, Kailash and his
family sat on the ground in front of the brightly lit stage, along with other
guests. Called to the stage, he wore the typical red-and-yellow turban of
Malwa. He sang two of his own beautiful numbers, then joined Prahladji
in singing two Malwa Kabir bhajans. Here are some of his remarks:
Through the power of his singing, he has captured the hearts of

many. I myself am so captivated that I can hardly believe I have
known him in a physical sense for only ten months. I also can
hardly believe that we two are alive in the same age. Sometimes
I have to pinch myself and ask—is this really true? Friends, some of
you appreciate my music and are sending loving smiles my way. Let
me tell you: What he is sharing is pure nectar. Nectar in huge quan-
tities. I have never seen nectar pouring in such quantities. When we
got here yesterday, I realized that there are some difficulties: short-
age of water, and lack of electricity so they have to use generators.
But I’ll tell you something. There is no richer place on this earth
than where we are right now.
72 Bodies of Song
We end this chapter with a glimpse of death, which, as usual with

Kabir, is also a glimpse of life:
[From my notebook] January 29, 2011

Prahladji and group were asked to sing in Indore at a function
following the death of a respected 100-year-old lady. There were
many guests in a large rented hall. The chief mourner, son of
the deceased, appeared to be in his 70s, head shaved, dressed in
white. He freely embraced the guests who were introduced to him
and wept in their arms—including me. He grooved to the Kabir
songs, appropriately chosen on themes of death and transiency,
alternately shedding tears, clapping in rhythm, and raising his
arm in enthusiastic endorsement. About Prahladji, he said to
me, “He is Kabir.” I showed some hesitation about this view, hav-
ing seen so much inflated praise particularly in these few days
since the Padma Shri award was announced. Then our host clari-
fied: “You are also Kabir. I am also Kabir. Whoever is expressing
and receiving Kabir, at that moment that person is Kabir.”
We proceed now to investigate how the words of this joyful and weep-
ing mourner come true: how Kabir’s varied identities and manifestations
take shape in the mouths and ears and minds of people in Malwa.
2
Oral Tradition in the

Twenty-First Century
Observing Texts
“I would have liked to do some work on Kabir,” said my friend Aditya, a

professor at the University of Pennsylvania, “but it’s too hard.”
“What do you mean, too hard?” I was alarmed at the implications for
me, as Aditya’s fluency in several Indian vernaculars plus Persian far
exceeded mine in the one Indian language I knew, Hindi. His answer was
simple:
“There’s no text.”1
We academics, especially in the humanities, want to have a text that sits
still. We want it to begin and end, to be contained between the covers of a
book. We don’t want the letters to squirm and change every time we open
the book.
We know that many vernacular texts in South Asia are not actually
stable, because they function in the oral realm. But as scholars we have
to draw the line, like parents setting boundaries on an unruly child: “OK,
enough is enough! You are going to sit still. Things are hard enough in
this household without you wildly jumping around all the time.” So we
settle on a critical edition or popular printed version.
It is understandable that scholars prefer to work on fixed written texts,
perhaps venturing so far as to compare recensions. In this book I want to
lure them, and a wider readership, into a different field of textual aware-
ness. What happens when texts are understood as oral, performative,
musical, contextual—brought into being again and again in the matrix
74 Bodies of Song
of interactions between performers, audiences, and circumstances? Is

it possible to hold in our minds both these dynamically produced texts
and the more well-behaved editions and collections with which we are
familiar? Can we bear to imagine the texts we study as both bounded and
unbounded, somewhat stable and unnervingly out of control, created and
recreated by individuals, groups, locations, conditions?
This chapter focuses on the production and reception of Kabir in oral
settings, with a particular interest in texts. We will briefly scan the histo-
ries of Kabir texts, noting their forms and modes of transmission over
centuries. Then we will track oral Kabir on the ground today, observing
conditions of performance, with special attention to how texts change.
Conclusions will include the following:
(1) Even in the promiscuously mixed media of our time, Kabir-attributed

texts show characteristics of oral poetry described by Albert Lord in
1960, and oral performance today reveals much about how textual flu-
idity operates.
(2) The complex movements of texts—over history, across regions, among
religious milieus and (claimed) authors—confound our attempts to
draw boundaries around Kabir or anyone else. But we can imagine
ecoregions in which the body of Kabir songs emerges with subtly dif-
fering colors and forms.
Human Body, Pen and Paper, Print,

Magnetic Tape, Film, Digital Disc,
Mobile Phone, Cyberspace
Certain kinds of Indian poetry have subsisted in oral tradition for centu-
ries. In the case of Kabir, oral transmission started in the 1400s with the
first poetic utterance from his mouth. A far-reaching oral tradition has
flourished ever since, but it did not long remain simply oral. As the scribe’s
pen and the printing press irrevocably changed the functioning of oral tra-
ditions in past centuries, in recent decades cassettes, CDs, video, and the
internet have joined the mix. When a folksinger becomes a recording art-
ist, oral texts get fixed in a small portable object, travel to new places, and
are recycled back into performed repertoires. All the technologies interact
with each other as well as with less mediated oral transmission. These
processes should be studied with respect to the particularities of time and
Oral Tradition: Observing Texts 75
place; but the nature of media is such that they cause texts and styles to
break through the lines of localities. Not all media are equal in given times
and places. Some are more dominant. They are always shifting. We can
observe closely but should generalize tactfully.2
The heading for this section lists in more or less chronological order
the main media in which Kabir has circulated from the fifteenth century
to the present. These developments were, of course, not linear. As soon as
there were two types of media, the feedback between them started. Then
three, four, and so on. Mostly, the older media stay and readjust to new sit-
uations. In the larger history of information and performance, we should
note that the first three items on the list developed over a long period
of time, while the rest have spread through the world at blinding speed.
The vast power of the internet, at this writing, has developed in less than
twenty years.
Kabir (whether he was literate or not) certainly shared his works orally.3
Others listened, sang, and spread the poetry. It naturally changed as they
spread it. Dialects and musical styles transitioned. Slips of the tongue (and
ear) and gaps of memory did their work. Deliberate alterations occurred
when someone preferred a different order to the stanzas, inserted a favorite
name of God, disliked and jettisoned a certain verse, or thought up a great
improvement in a line. It wasn’t long until Kabir’s name was tacked on to
whole poems he never composed—whether the source was a song floating
around in local tradition or something the performer made up, feeling that
the content was suitable to Kabir or that the attribution honored Kabir.4
Soon, no doubt while he was still alive, somebody wrote down some-
thing heard from or attributed to Kabir. We have no manuscripts from
his lifetime, but writing was certainly present. The early manuscripts
that have come down to us were mainly the ones sponsored and saved by
sects: most importantly, the Dadu Panth in Rajasthan, the Sikhs in Punjab,
and the Kabir Panth in more northern and eastern directions (today’s
Uttar Pradesh [U.P.] and Bihar). These collections, largely post-1600 but
with some material traceable as far back as the 1570s, became the core of
the most important written collections that exist.5 They were copied and
recopied, combined, altered, and enlarged. In the western collections of
Rajasthan and Punjab, Kabir mingled with other poets—the Gurus and
Bhagats of Sikh scripture, the five sants found in the Panchvāṇī of the
Dadu Panth, and the thematically arranged multi-poet Rajasthani Sarvāngī
collections. For the Kabir Panthis who compiled their various versions of
the Bījak in more easterly regions, Kabir stood alone.6
76 Bodies of Song
The sects that were writing down these texts were also singing them.
Within and outside of sectarian settings, people sing.7 In each place and
time, Kabir found himself in a particular textual, religious, musical, social,
political, and economic environment. Each of these aspects of life affected
the others. Through continuous singing, sharing, writing, working, join-
ing, separating, buying, selling, making, and ritualizing, ecosystems were
formed in which texts grew in their own ways. Different Kabirian ecore-
gions were both connected and distinct. Given the way in which scholar-
ship on oral and written cultures has tended to dichotomize and imply
evolutionary stages, it is important to emphasize this: Once we transi-
tioned from the period of primarily oral transmission to the period in
which handwritten collections were being preserved, we had not advanced
from the oral to the written stage. We had oral and handwritten traditions,
giving and receiving each other’s feedback. When printing arrived with
its new economies and distribution systems, we had not moved on to the
stage of print, leaving behind oral performance and handwriting. We had
indeed entered a different era. Writing and print drastically altered the
environment. Oral performance continued, still an important but a signifi-
cantly altered mode of transmitting text.
No one has better captured the scope and intimacy of Indian intertex-
tualities than A. K. Ramanujan,, a master of both literature and folklore.
In my explorations of the oral, written, performative, fixed, and fluid in
Indian textual worlds, he has been a continuous fountain of inspiration
and insight. It is worth pausing with a long quotation from his essay “Who
Needs Folklore?” (Ramanujan 1999):
In a largely non-literate culture, everyone—poor, rich, high caste,

low caste, professor, pandit or ignoramus—has inside him or her a
large non-literate subcontinent. (533)
Written and hallowed texts are not the only kinds of texts in a
culture like the Indian. Oral traditions of every kind produce texts.
. . . Every cultural performance not only creates and carries texts, it
is a text.
. . . [W]‌e can . . . see all these performances as a transitive series,
a ‘scale of forms’ . . . responding to one another, engaged in con-
tinuous and dynamic dialogic relations. Past and present, what’s
‘pan-Indian’ and what’s local, what’s shared and what’s unique
in regions, communities, and individuals, the written and the
oral—all are engaged in a dialogic reworking and redefining of the
relevant others. . . . In our studies now we are beginning to recog-

nize and place folk-texts in this ever-present network of intertextual-
ity. (535–36)
In all cultures, and especially in the Indian, the oral and the writ-
ten are deeply intermeshed. . . . A work may be composed orally but
transmitted in writing. . . . Or it may be composed in writing . . . but
the text kept alive by . . . reciters who know it by heart and chant it
aloud. . . . Thus, over a long history, a story may go through many
phases. An oral story gets written up or written down. . . . Then (as
W. Norman Brown tried to show in a famous paper) the written text
may reach other audiences who pick up the story and retell it orally,
maybe in other languages, and then it gets written down some-
where else, perhaps starting another cycle of transmissions. . . .
Many of the differences in our classical texts, like the Mahābhārata
recensions, may be due to the way the texts do not simply go from
one written form to another but get reworked through oral cycles
that surround the written word. . . . Methods of Western textual criti-
cism aim at making tree-diagrams, relating one written version to
another, demonstrating that one came directly from another reach-
ing back to a single Ur-text. Texts like the Mahābhārata may not have
a reconstructable Ur-text at all, enmeshed as they were in oral tradi-
tions at various stages of their composition and transmission. (541)
As Philip Lutgendorf . . . has shown . . . Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas
is the focus of cults, festivals, formal and informal recitations, tab-
leaus and oral forays into interpretations of the most wide-ranging
and ingenious kinds. . . . Oral traditions thus enlarge the range and
they complicate and balance the texts we know. Yet we ignore the
oral. (542–43)
In the early twenty-first century, many of the Kabir singers I met in

Malwa were writing down texts in their own little copybooks, loosely
stapled-together paper notebooks. Prahladji had thousands of songs writ-
ten down in copybooks going back to 1977. At his father’s house in Devali
village, Dinesh Sharma showed me an old collection of handwritten bha-
jans in dated layers, some of which went back a hundred years.8 These were
not written in copybooks, but on large sheets eventually bound together.
A few of the singers I met were not literate, so we might be tempted to say
they were operating in a primarily oral realm. But this was not at all the
same as in the fifteenth century! Though they didn’t read and write down
78 Bodies of Song
Kabir texts for their own use, they listened to cassettes, watched videos,
and heard performances by singers who did write and read. So the mate-
rial they were getting was heavily influenced by the whole history of media
that we are reviewing here.
Print became a force in Kabir textual dissemination in the nine-
teenth century, starting with an 1868 lithograph of the Bījak. In his book
Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs, Vinay Dharwadker combines the data available
from previous textual scholars, providing a chart of major manuscript and
print editions, including information on contents, compilers, geograph-
ical sources, and sectarian or courtly patrons, from 1570 to 2000. It is
interesting to see how manuscripts proliferate in the seventeenth through
nineteenth centuries and begin to dovetail with print editions, comprising
what we are used to calling the “written tradition.”
Now, understanding that oral and written are not a tidy dyad, we think
about multidirectional transmission via bodies, objects, devices; texts
walking, flying, embracing, and repelling each other, getting written and
printed, magnetized and digitized, and turning again into live perfor-
mances. Amid this media cacophony, how do we understand “oral tradi-
tion”? The meaning is far more complicated than I expected when I began
this project. Here I will reiterate my definition of oral tradition for the
purposes of this book. In this chapter and in c hapter 5, the complications
will unfold.
I use the term “oral” (interchangeable with “oral-performative”) only
for live, embodied performance. In this study, the first requirement for
“oral Kabir” is that the text must be heard physically, with the ears. It will
of course be a multisensory experience, but it can’t exclude the ears, as
silent reading does. The second requirement is that it be live, body to body.
We can study oral tradition through audio, video, and electronic media.
But we can experience oral tradition only in live transmission. Even amid
the complexity of media and the layering of history, we can “prick up our
ears,” tuning in to the oral-performative aspects of Kabir traditions, culti-
vating awareness of how elements of text and performance relate to each
other in oral environments. We can accomplish this by observing, listen-
ing, thinking, and practicing.
What do I mean by “practicing”? The most direct practice is to go to
places where Kabir is sung, heard, and used, and to experience what all
that means. That is what this book attempts to represent. Short of that
kind of travel and immersion, we can begin to learn about oral tradition by
studying our texts in somewhat unconventional ways. For example: Listen
to recordings of sung bhajans and dohās. Try to sing and memorize the
words. This practice will at once strike you with the difference between
oral and written modes, even if you depend on written versions to sing
and memorize. Notice the differences between bhajan (song) and dohā
(couplet), both of which are performed by Kabir singers. Observe your
own experience (physical, cognitive, emotional) in listening and singing
compared to your experience in reading. Experiment with different condi-
tions: live performances (in varying locations and social situations, with or
without instruments, amplification, etc.); recordings; singing or reciting
in Hindi; improvising a musical composition of a poem in translation.
Making It Up as You Go Along:

The Fluidity of Texts
Rajula Shah has made a documentary on Malwa Kabir singers, quite dif-
ferent from the films of Shabnam Virmani in that Shah did not work with
singers who were especially musically gifted or who had made a mark as
performers. Shah’s film, Śhabad nirantar/ Word Within the Word (2008),
focuses solely on ordinary people who we might imagine as the common
core of those who have kept the Kabir singing tradition alive. Unknown
beyond their localities, they get together to sing and discuss for no other
reason than that they enjoy and feel edified by it.
Shah often shows scenes in real life that reflect the imagery in songs.
A grizzled old man plows a small field with two bullocks while we hear a song
about symbolic bullocks in a symbolic field. As the old man plows, wields a
hoe, and cuts plants, we hear his interview. He has been singing bhajans for
many years and has taught his son, Shankarlal. The son, he says, “is literate,
keeps scribbling, modifies hymns and makes new ones.” The elderly father
knows countless songs. “We don’t sing in loops, we sing new ones, we have
a vast repertoire of hymns. I’m illiterate, but once I begin there’s no stopping
me. I can go on for eight nights without repeating a hymn. I don’t remember
how many I remember! Once I start, they just roll out.”
We see a close-up of the plow’s blade pushing through rocky soil as
the sounds of tambūrā, cymbals, and men’s voices come up. The visu-
als switch to a man spinning cotton thread and weaving a rope, then to
close-ups of handwritten words of Kabir. The singing fades as we see a
grey-bearded but younger man—Shankarlal—looking at a notebook,
with a group of young and old men nearby. His testimony, delivered with
80 Bodies of Song
gestures and laughter, is a quintessence of how singers have played with

texts for centuries.
Pointing to his copybook, he refers to a particular refrain: “Ink fades to
a pale white,” he reads out. “Now folks here won’t understand that, so we
have to explain what ink means. Ink means youth, and white is old age.”
He breaks into song: “Youth fades, palsy shakes, how will you deal with
it, brother?” Explaining again: “Folks need these words, they won’t know
the meaning of ‘ink fades.’ ” A big laugh. “I tackle it my own way.” He
sings again: “Youth fades, palsy shakes, how will you deal with it, brother?
Sickness torments your frail body. Who will you turn to, brother? Hold fast
to God’s name!” He is really enjoying this, giggling as he says, “No matter
how hard they try, they can’t find my line here. We have to rephrase it to
make the song work. But of course I don’t tamper with Kabir’s name. In
the end, it’s ‘Kabir says,’ so he’s responsible!”
Kabir texts become relatively fluid when sung in live spaces, in contrast
to their fixity in written or recorded form. In this section we will look at the
ways in which singers and reproducers, consciously and unconsciously,
change texts. We will note how written, printed, and recorded forms inter-
act with oral sung texts, and how the very fact that a text is written, printed,
or recorded gives authority to that particular version. Eventually we will
reflect on the entry of electronic media into the textual field. In c hapter 5
we will venture into theories of orality, with respect to the experiences and
processes of singers and listeners. After traveling these maze-like path-
ways, we will consider again the distinctness of oral tradition.
Fluidity in Words, Lines, Passages, Sequences

During my first year of research, I collected hundreds of song-texts, greedy
to possess the words but unable to simply hold them in my body the way
the people around me did. Often I thought of Ramanujan’s vivid evoca-
tions of the bodily location of texts, even for literate people, in a largely
oral culture:
[U]‌
ntil recently to read meant to read aloud. I’ve heard of a
grand-uncle who would say he couldn’t read a novel because he
had a sore throat. . . . Pundits and Vedic experts had what Narayana
Rao calls “oral literacy”: they used an almost entirely oral medium,
but were learned in grammar, syntax, logic, and poetics. Their lit-
eracy was, as it were, imbued in their bodies. We speak of a learned
man having all his texts in his throat, kanṭhastha; when one is igno-
rant, one is called “a fellow who has no letters in his belly” or a
nirakṣarakukṣī. (Ramanujan 1999, 538–39)
I still have those piles of rumpled sheets, sometimes in my handwrit-

ing, sometimes penned by Prahladji or a fellow musician in the mandalī.
The sheets of paper are associated with memories of different places and
conditions—sitting on the floor of the village home, on a layer of straw at a
Kabir Panth gathering, in a train chugging rhythmically along while curi-
ous onlookers watch the process of transcription. One day, at my request,
Prahladji wrote down Bhāv nagarī, “the city of love.” First comes the ṭek
(refrain), with repetitions that he has written out in full. Then the stan-
zas, which he has marked by number: 1, 2, 3, 4. My notes jotted over his
lines show a further layer in the process of transforming an oral perfor-
mance into a written artifact—notes by which the literary person seeks
to make the text comprehensible to herself: Malwi thāne (I wrote) equals
Hindi āpko. Eb means avaguṇ or doṣ. Kachanār is a small tree with beauti-
ful flowers, bauhinia variegata, the buds used for vegetables, the leaves for
medicine. In the following weeks I translated that song, which to me was a
beautiful poem. Each stanza had a ruling image. They built on each other,
unfolding a lyrical story of life.
In December 2002, in Malwa, I met Shabnam Virmani—the Bangalore
filmmaker beginning to explore Kabir music, poetry, and social settings.
Like me, she had heard about Malwa’s Kabir singers and Eklavya’s Kabir
project, and she would work closely with Prahladji and others in the com-
ing years as she created a series of films, audio CDs, and other works.
Shabnam and I became close friends, sharing our projects in innumerable
ways. Once when I returned to India after nine months at home, I found
that she had recorded Prahladji singing Bhāv nagarī, and she had tran-
scribed and translated the song. I felt upset to see that she had written the
stanzas in a different order than I had. I was attached to my translation. It
had an inner logic; it needed to go in that order. Anybody could see that her
order was a mistake. I was afraid that hers would take over, overrun mine,
and people would think that was the real order.
All of this is utter māyā (illusion), of course. Her order and mine are
both poignantly contingent. The order of lines and stanzas frequently
changes. Prahladji himself had written down the stanzas in one order with
me and later sung them in a different order with Shabnam. In some cases
performers would consider the order important and would point out what
82 Bodies of Song
is correct and what is a mistake. In others they wouldn’t care. What is actu-
ally interesting here is how texts get frozen. I am creating a little canon by
publishing my work. Shabnam is creating one by recording a particular
version and reinforcing it by printing the texts in a book that goes with the
CD. From then on, people who use my book or her CD will have a strong
impression of what is the right order. They will quote it, analyze it, and
spread it, because it is available from a fixed source, not just an ephemeral
performance. The authority of frozen text will ripple out in all directions.
In 2003 Shabnam and I met the Gundecha brothers—renowned dhrūpad
singers of Bhopal. They were going to sing two Kabir bhajans for a CD
she was producing. When I asked how they got the particular texts they
sang (imagining that they might have learned from the oral tradition), they
said they only use words that are authorized by being printed in a book!
Similarly a tailor in Damakheda village, who sang Kabir bhajans and was
a mahant (religious propagator and ritual authority) in the Dharamdasi
Kabir Panth, said, “For us to sing it, it must be in a book. Anybody can
make up a song and put Kabir’s name on it. If it’s in a book, it has authen-
ticity [pramāṇiktā].”
Nearly every song we heard from multiple sources in Malwa had varia-
tions from one singer to another, often from one occasion to another. The
text of Suntā hai guru gyānī in the rousing folk rendition by Prahladji is
about 75 percent the same as the haunting, slow version sung by Kumar
Gandharva, the classical singer who lived an hour’s drive from Prahladji’s
village, and who first heard the song from a wandering yogi (Hess 2009a,
30–31). In Devali village, the thick handwritten collection of bhajan texts
that Dinesh Sharma’s forefathers had been collecting for a century had a
version of Suntā hai guru gyānī that was full of spelling variations from the
versions we knew and had some lines that were different from anything
we had heard. The most striking difference was in the last line:
kahe kabīr suno bhāī sadho, narak paḍe abhimānī

Kabir says, listen seekers, the arrogant fall into hell.
This jarring line seems to come from nowhere. It has nothing to do with
the tenor and mysterious yogic imagery of the rest of the song; it has never
arisen in any performed version we are acquainted with. But we know
that formulaic signatures can be easily thrown in, just grabbed from the
abundance of “Kabir says” lines floating in the air. Someone singing or
writing in Devali village a few decades ago produced this closing line,
demonstrating that a different ṭek or chhāp can be easily plugged into an

opening or closing position.
In an article on early written traditions, I had once suggested that ṭek and
chhāp—the refrain that opens the song and is repeated throughout, and the
formulaic signature at the end—are the most portable parts of a song and
can easily get changed and substituted (Hess 1987b). About twenty years
later Joel Lee, then a PhD student in anthropology at Columbia University,
questioned me about this claim. It sounded plausible, but I hadn’t backed
it up with enough examples to make it stick. Alerted by Joel’s question, I
began to notice more examples.9 The following notes, written in August
2009 in Lunyakhedi village, first set the scene by describing Prahladji’s
collection of handwritten texts, then conclude with a vivid example of ṭek
“portability.” (See Figure 2.1)
This morning I find PT carefully stacking old notebooks, straighten-

ing up loose, torn, and out-of-order pages. They are his oldest hand-
written collections, which are falling apart. Rodents have taken bites
from the corners. He has decided to revisit them today. There are
Figure 2.1. Prahladji’s hand on an old handwritten bhajan notebook. Photo by

Smriti Chanchani.
84 Bodies of Song
many old bhajans that they haven’t sung for a long time. He starts
to talk to me about them. Such conversations are a treasure-house
of knowledge about the culture of singing and interpreting Kabir
and others.10
Browsing through, PT pauses on one sākhī. A key word is
prārabda, which means fate or results of previous lives. He inter-
prets it, saying that its real meaning is about our karma in this life,
emphasizing our power to shape our own fate. But, he says, the
Kabir Panthis and other sectarians have wrongly construed it to
suggest that some higher power outside ourselves, and unknown
actions in earlier lives, determine our fate. One interpretation
brings forth our power and agency, the other kills it. That higher
power, that energy, is within ourselves, he says.
Next he speaks of the Nath Panth. He says that both sects [Nath
Panth and Kabir Panth] are made up of mainly low-caste, unedu-
cated people. Upper-caste people controlled the temples, so low
castes put forth a religion insisting that God is an energy (he uses
the English word), a power that is within ourselves.
He comes upon a set of texts marked kīrtan, starting with
hymns to Krishna. “In those days,” he says, “we used to sing all
this—Krishna and Ganapati, saguṇ bhakti. We sang for festivals and
functions.” Along with Krishna I see the names of Shankar and
Parvati, and rāmchandrajī kī āratī. He starts singing a Krishnaite
text in a repetitious melody. His brother Ambaram, standing
nearby, joins in, smiling as he remembers those long-ago days. The
heading kīrtan appears on multiple pages. In contrast is bhajan, a
heading that applies to Kabir, Gorakhnath, and other nirgun poets.
On one page in the kīrtan section, he points out to me that a Kabir
bhajan has been sung as if it is a Vaishnav kīrtan. The entire bhajan,
familiar to me, is widely attributed to Kabir. I have heard versions of
it often and have seen it in printed collections. But here the refrain
begins with a sign of Vaishnav ownership: om hari kīrtan se dil na
churānā re, is jīvan kā nahī ṭhikānā re.11 At the end, instead of Kabir’s
signature, om hari kīrtan is repeated. Prahladji provides an interpre-
tation: the Vaishnavs liked the bhajan but didn’t like Kabir, so they
just removed his name and called it hari kīrtan.
We could go on till the end of time cataloguing variations in words,

phrases, and sequences in performed or written versions of what is rec-
ognizably the “same” song. In most cases there is no point in trying to
say which came first, or to designate one as primary, the other as vari-
ant. Prahladji’s Zarā halke gāḍī hānko, an all-time favorite in Malwa, is a
song I have not heard or read anywhere else. But certain parts of it show
up in a popular song, Man phūlā phūlā phirat jagat meṇ, which I found
in a printed bhajan collection picked up in a Delhi market and heard on
a cassette by Madhup Mudgal. A sobbing woman appears in the Malwa
bhajan: bhilak bhilak kar tiriyā rove. In the Delhi book it is lapaṭi jhapaṭi
ke tiriyā rove. Her sobs are evoked with different words, but in both cases
it is a rhyming-repeating, onomatopoetic word pair. We also have in both
songs the image of the “wooden horse” (kāṭh ki ghodī) for the litter on
which a dead body goes to the burning ground, and the sudden flare-up
of the funeral fire compared, incongruously, to the happy bonfire of the
Holi festival. The same formula—the woman sobbing that she has lost
her partner, while Kabir comments that the one who joined them is the
one who broke them apart—appears in yet another song, sung by Kumar
Gandharva (Hess 2009a, 80). While noticing these overlaps between
otherwise quite different songs, I see that Man phūlā contains lines that
appear in yet other poems in the Bījak—for example, haḍ jarai jas lakadī,
kes jarai jas ghāsā—bones burn like sticks, hair burns like grass.
All the texts compared in the last paragraph share themes of death and
the tenuousness of family attachments. On their own, the compositions
may seem to have integrity as poems, but these variations and duplica-
tions of lines and passages in different contexts tell a different story. While
some full poem texts can be passed along nearly intact for centuries (as
evidenced by old manuscripts), the common unit in oral transmission is
much shorter: half-lines, full lines, couplets, and themes held together by
imagery. The pioneering work of Albert Lord on oral-formulaic composi-
tion is still illuminating here, even though he studied oral epic, a very dif-
ferent genre, in Yugoslavia, a very distant place.12
In some songs it is easier to get the sense of a pastiche of themes and
images without much coherence. Shabnam comments on one such song,
“Thārā bhariyā samand māhī hīrā”:
Traveling through the centuries, from body to body, from singer

to singer, some song lines are remembered, but some get lost in
transmission, and the song gets completed with images from other
songs. And indeed, why not? If you’re immersed in the Kabirian
pool of poetic imagery, the metaphors start getting familiar, encoun-
tered time and again in different songs, till they almost seem like
old friends. So why wouldn’t they be allowed to enter the body of
86 Bodies of Song
another song, much like a good friend being allowed to gate crash
another friend’s party? This . . . blurring of boundaries and casual
breaking of the rules of purity is part of the folk aesthetic. (Virmani
2008c, 41)
Sometimes a structure allows for easy substitution and addition with-

out altering the sense that it is the same song. The song cited above with
“om hari kirtan” is frequently sung by Prahladji with a different refrain.
In his version, all the stanzas begin with yon saṃsār, “this world,” whose
transient nature is evoked in a series of vivid images—a market, a clump
of brambles, a paper boat, a glass bangle. The song can be long or short: it
doesn’t matter if there are four examples or six or seven, each with its own
verse. A version of this song is included in Kshitimohan Sen’s 1910–11 col-
lection, as well in the Delhi bazaar bhajan book I have referred to. Both
lack the lovely repeated refrain of Prahladji’s Malwa version:
mat kar mān gumān, mat kar kāyā ko ahaṃkār

kesariyā rang uḍi jāye lo, gulābī rang uḍi jāye lo.
Don’t be proud
will fly.13
The flexibility and spontaneity of oral tradition occur in the risings and
fallings of these “pieces” of poetry.
A charming exchange takes place in Shabnam’s film Chalo hamara des/
Come to My Country (Virmani 2008a), between middle-aged Prahladji and a
very old man he once learned from. Shabnam and Prahladji travel to the old
mentor’s village, and the two men meet after a long time. When Chenamaruji
was middle-aged and Prahladji was young, the older singer shared his own
huge repertoire with the younger. Prahladji recognizes the harmonium he
used to play, now battered and chipped with age, like the old man’s teeth. At
Prahladji’s urging Chenaji tries to sing, but soon he is breathless. Someone
gives him a glass of water. He smiles and says, “Don’t trouble me any more.
You sing.” Prahladji takes the harmonium. “Here is one that you taught me,
and I’ve sung it so many times.” He starts to sing, encouraging Chenaji to
join in, which the old man does, seeming to gain energy as they continue.
hamen sāhib se milnā hai, arre yār satguru se milnā hai

maiṇ nashe meṇ chūr yār, mere guru se milnā hai,
meṇ nashe meṇ kḥūb yar, mālik se milnā hai
I’m on my way
to meet the guru, on my way
to meet the lord.
I’m smashed, completely drunk, my friend,
about to meet the lord.
As they sing, they seamlessly slide into lines on the same theme, with a
tune that is a little different—
sāhib ne bhāng pilāī, aisī bhāng pilāī

akhiyoṃ meṇ lālan chāī ho, satgura ne bhāng pilāī
pī kar pyālā huā divānā, ghūm rahā jaise matvālā
The lord gave me a drink, what a potion he gave me to drink!

My eyes turn red, the guru gave me a drink.
I drank from that cup and went mad,
I staggered around like a drunkard.
Suddenly they pause, look at each other and laugh, Prahladji still strum-
ming the tambūrā. “It’s the wrong song, isn’t it? We started singing another
one by mistake!” Thus is enacted in front of us memory’s way of retaining
and forgetting, arranging and rearranging lines of song by associations of
theme, imagery, melody.
Oral folk traditions foster a liberal attitude toward words and mean-
ings, in contrast with situations where there is an obligation to adhere
to what is correct. Shabnam once said to me, “It’s very hospitable poetry.
People can inhabit it.” In a written commentary, she discusses oral tradi-
tion, highlighting a conversation between two singers in Malwa:
It was the crack of dawn one winter morning in Malwa. We were on

the road, returning from a village concert. A beautiful conversation
started between Prahladji and a young and upcoming singer, Arun
Goyal. They were discussing the refrain of a song –
Go, go my friend—
across the seven seas.
88 Bodies of Song
Bring back a pearl, oh seeker,

an unpierced one, oh yes!
When Prahladji sings this song, the seeker is asked to bring up

an anabindiyā motī—an unpierced pearl. But when Arun sings
the same song, the seeker is asked to bring up an anabhinjiyā
motī—an undrenched pearl. The two singers debated the merits
of that single syllabic shift, and eventually agreed that both poetic
options must be sung since both held true to the ideas of Kabir. In
one, Kabir invites you to find a pearl of wisdom that has not been
strung into a narrow framework of meaning. In another, Kabir
invites you to find that pearl which, even while being immersed
in the worldly ocean, remains untouched, unattached, unaffected
by it.14
I marveled afresh at the oral traditions, these open worlds of dis-
course and dialogue, in which the singers and “receivers” of Kabir’s
poems were as much its custodians, owners and contributors, par-
ticipating in the creation and growth of that poetic oeuvre through
the lens of their own experiences.
This conversation seemed far removed from the worlds of aca-
demic discourse that sought to ferret out the “authentic” Kabir,
dismissing millions of poems alive and traveling in the name of
Kabir, as “inauthentic.” So far removed also from the worlds of holy
scripture—of fixed letters on sacrosanct pages. . . .
Many of the songs of “Kabir” sung in this collection bear the
signature of poets like Bhavani Nath, Gulabi Das, Bana Nath,
Hussain Fakir, Dharam Das and others, about most of whom very
little is known except that they were inspired . . . to compose their
own songs replete with . . . Kabirian ideas and images. (Virmani
2008c, 43–45)
The reference to holy scriptures is illustrated by another story that

Shabnam told me. She noticed a resistance among some Sikhs to the
free-flowing ways of Kabir in folk traditions. This is because Kabir has
been incorporated into the Sikh sacred text, the Ādi Granth, and thus, in
some people’s view, rightly removed from circulation. A Sikh singer, after
recording Kabir songs, handed her a piece of paper with the texts and
declared that he had not deviated a single syllable from the form in the
holy book. When Shabnam enthusiastically described a Malwa “bhajan
competition” where many groups presented their diverse texts and rendi-
tions, a Sikh friend expressed skepticism: “That’s not such a good idea.
The authentic Kabir is gurbāṇī, in the Granth Sāhib. We shouldn’t fool
around with it.”15
One can get a dramatic sense of the great pool of “Kabirian” themes
and formulas in northern and central India by comparing across regions
and religious-social formations. Within this oceanic pool are smaller seas
that are definable by certain marks but do not have fixed boundaries.16
They flow, change, overlap, and can only be “seen” when one decides to
focus (as in the famous Escher graphics) on foreground and background
in certain ways. One can identify nirguṇ and saguṇ areas; Nath, Sufi, and
Kabir Panthi areas; thematic areas featuring the imagery of the yogic body,
or of lover and beloved; geographic areas like Rajasthan, U.P., or Bihar.
My work with oral Kabir has been mainly in the Malwa region of Madhya
Pradesh, where the marks of Nath Yogi, Kabir Panthi, and Rajasthani cul-
tures are strongly identifiable. After immersing herself in Kabir and related
poetry/music of Malwa and Rajasthan, Shabnam extended her research to
the Kutch region of Gujarat. Her recordings of the Kutchi singer Muralala
Marvadi illustrate the extensive reach of thematic and formulaic patterns
and—stirring despair in the hearts of those who seek authentic Kabir—the
interchangeability of poets and passages. For example, Muralala sings a
song attributed to Khīm-sāhib whose content is indistinguishable from
that of countless songs of Kabir, centered on poetic evocations of the yogic
body.17
Muralala also sings songs of lover and beloved expressed in a woman’s
voice. Prahladji in Malwa sings many such songs, often addressed to the
helī or female friend. So does Mukhtiyar Ali in Rajasthan, which seems
to be the epicenter of the helī genre. Bhakti poetry of lover and beloved
in North India is always inflected by the powerful tradition of devotion to
Krishna and Radha, who share a transcendent love. But when it appears in
Kabir and other nirguṇ poets, it often has a peculiar yogic twist: the beloved
is said to reside inside one’s own body and to be attainable by yogic prac-
tices. The following verses, excerpted from a song sung by Muralala with
Kabir’s signature, illustrate both the yogic core and the Krishnaite reso-
nance. The name used for the lord is śhyām, dark one—rarely found in
Kabir and always suggesting Krishna:
Come, let’s go meet the five

Let’s rein in the twenty-five!18
90 Bodies of Song
Stay with the name

In every corner, the colors fade. . . .
Come, let’s go to that sky-dome

where my Dark One stays
I’ve seen the right and left channels.
The central channel is dancing there! . . .
A more famous song is Ghūnghaṭ ke phat khol, tohe pīv milenge—“Open

your veil [ghūnghaṭ, the sari end with which village women cover their
faces], you will meet the beloved.” This refrain sets a tone of Krishnaite
romance, but the verses are yogic, saying that the lord/beloved is within
your own body and invoking the “empty palace” [śhūnya mahal, meaning
the body] within which the practitioner should maintain an unmoving
meditative posture in order to hear the unstruck sound.19
Open your veil

and meet the beloved.
The lord dwells

in every body.
Don’t speak harsh words.
Don’t be proud of your youth

or your wealth.
That five-colored vest
deludes you.
A lamp glows
in the palace of emptiness.
Stay still,
don’t stir.
In the bright palace

a yogic device.
You find the beloved
beyond price.
Kabir says, bliss

is here.
Listen to the boom
of the unstruck drum.
Fluidity in Authorship and Sectarian Affiliation

In the previous section I used the metaphor of an oceanic pool of Kabirian
images, formulas, phrases, and themes, adapted from Ramanujan’s “pool
of signifiers” for the Rāmāyaṇa. I also suggested the “ecoregion” metaphor
as a way of mapping texts of Kabir and others in North India. Features of
these landscapes might include authors’ names and religious or sectarian
affiliations. What other poets show up in performances as good friends
of Kabir? What other poets crisscross with Kabir as claimed authors of
the same poems? What sectarian names and terms show up in Kabir’s
company? In Malwa, songs of Kabir are closely associated with the Kabir
Panth and the Nath Panth and with poets belonging to both (Dharamdas,
Gorakhnath, Bananath, etc.). In Pakistan, Kabir is found in the company
of Sufis. In this section, we will see examples of these crossings and how
they affect the substance and attribution of texts.
I am not the first to suggest “mapping” as a metaphor for studying the
complex affinities and fluidities of Indian texts that exist in many forms
and media. I speak here of mapping Kabir texts amid certain religious
associations, names, terms, and poetic phrases and passages. Francesca
Orsini, in her work on Hindi and Urdu language and literature, has pro-
posed historico-geographical maps, maps of genres, and more.20
Prahladji sings Shūnya ghar shahar with Kabir’s signature line; Kumar
Gandharva’s version of the same song gives authorship to Gorakhnath.21
Kumarji sings another song attributed to Gorakhnath, which Muralala of
Kutch, Gujarat, sings under the name of Kabir.22 And Muralala sings a
refrain almost universally associated with Kabir, Man lāgo mero yār fakīrī
meṇ, with a different set of verses, all attributed to Mirabai. The refrain is
the same; the stanzas are different, but with a similar theme—preferring
simplicity and poverty over wealth and luxury. A couplet recited as Kabir’s
by Prahladji is attributed to Bulleh Shah in Rajasthan. Another “Kabir”
couplet heard in Malwa is credited to Shah Abdul Latif in Kutch. Carol
Salomon quotes from a Baul song: “If circumcision make you a Muslim,
what is the woman? If sacred thread makes you Brahmin, what is the
woman?” These famous lines of Kabir (so I always thought!) are attributed
to the Bengali poet Lalon Shah/Lalan Fakir (Salomon 1996, 192). A Baul
song cited by Lisa Knight as Man siksa is virtually identical to the Kabir
song I know in Malwa as Jāg musāfir jāg (Knight 2011, 117).
As I kept uncovering these cross-region, cross-language, and cross-poet
attributions of the same lines and passages, I still clung to the notion that a
92 Bodies of Song
figure called Kabir was separable from the rest. That faith was momentarily
shattered when I happened upon a citation in Francoise Delvoye’s article,
“The Thematic Range of Dhrupad Songs Attributed to Tansen, Foremost
Court-Musician of the Mughal Emperor Akbar”: “Here Tansen, to whom
the following composition is attributed, addresses his mind: Dhireṁ dhireṁ
re mana dhireṁ saba kachu hoi . . . / ‘Slowly, slowly, O my mind, everything
takes its time!’ ” (Delvoye 1994, 422).
I was shocked! But why should I be after all these years? I cherish this
as a couplet at the very center (if such a metaphor is permitted) of the
Kabir corpus. Delvoye doesn’t cite the second line, but most likely it would
be the one I know: mālī sīnche sau ghaḍa, ritu āve phal hoi. It’s one of the
few sākhīs that I can always produce from memory. I used it to make an
important statement at the opening of one of my books. Delvoye’s attribu-
tion of this line to Tansen is a tipping point. Maybe nothing belongs to any-
body in this sprawling set of poetic traditions. Kabir would undoubtedly
approve of this conclusion. Didn’t he famously say koī nahīṇ apnā (no one
belongs to anyone)? Wait, who knows whether he really said that or not?
In Malwa a Kabir singing session with Prahladji, Kaluramji,
Narayanji, or some other Kabir specialist would have a generous sprin-
kling of songs attributed to other poets—but not just any others. They
would be nirguṇ poets, and the other names were usually associated
with either the Kabir Panth, to which many of the locals belong, or the
Nath Panth.23
The Kabir Panth has a number of distinct lineages that claim
descent from Kabir himself (see c hapter 7). In this section I refer only
to the Damakheda-based Kabir Panth, which introduces the figure of
Dharamdas and poetry attributed to him. Damakheda, a village near
Raipur, Chhattisgarh, is the headquarters of one of the largest Kabir
Panth formations. Its many followers, spreading from Bihar in the
east to Rajasthan and Gujarat in the west, are also called Dharamdasis,
because they believe that Kabir’s first and greatest disciple was the mer-
chant Dharamdas, who established the sect during Kabir’s lifetime on the
express orders of the master.24 In this sectarian environment, the names
of Kabir and Dharamdas often come together. Many songs are attributed
to Dharamdas, and many others include the names of both Kabir and
Dharamdas. Once Prahladji showed me a thick collection of Kabir bha-
jans edited by Yugalanand, a Damakheda devotee. The great majority of
poems concluded with an unvarying half-line, “Kabir says to Dharamdas.”
Prahladji suggested that many of these songs were traditionally sung with
no mention of Dharamdas, but that sectarians had pasted in the chhāp that
supported their version of history.
The Nath Panth is a sect of yogis, long present in North India in
both renunciant and householder streams, tracing their origin to
Gorakhnath, whose dates are uncertain. Some scholars suggest that
Kabir’s forefathers were householder Nath Panthis, that the culture of
this tradition pervaded their community even after their conversion to
Islam, and that the religious/experiential language of the Naths would
still have been common in the family during Kabir’s lifetime.25 “Jogi”
singers continue to wander in North India, their repertoire dominated
by Kabir.26
There is an immediate affinity between Kabir and the Nath yogi tradi-
tion. In every collection and location where I have encountered Kabir’s
poetry, there is always a strong representation of poems about experi-
ence in the body, laced with poetic uses of the technical language of yoga.
Once I visited the Kabir Panth samādhi-temple in Magahar, where Kabir is
believed to have died. This shrine is kept by the Kabir Chaura (Varanasi)
tradition of Kabir Panthis, who are quite distinct from the Dharamdasis.
Hanging out with the white-clad Kabir Panth sadhus was a tall and voluble
Nath yogi in bright red robes, with the large round earrings that mark
Nath initiates, giving sect members the alternate name of kānphaṭas,
pierced-ears. The genial yogi joked with me and invited me to visit him
in nearby Nepal, where he lived. Magahar itself is next door to the larger
city of Gorakhpur, named after the great yogi Gorakhnath, where the
headquarters of the organized Nath tradition is located. Though I didn’t
probe his interest in Kabir, his presence there to me was emblematic of the
long-running relationship between Naths and Kabir.
Apart from anecdotes, there is ample textual evidence of this affinity.
I have referred to musicologist Edward Henry’s documentation of Nath
singers in the area around Varanasi (Henry 1988, 160ff.). Nearly all their
songs carry Kabir’s signature line. In addition, I have studied an anthol-
ogy of over five hundred song texts collected by a famous Nath yogi mas-
ter in Malwa in the early twentieth century. Shilnath lived in Dewas for
about twenty years before moving to the Himalayan foothills in the last
phase of his life. His dhūnī (the fire associated with wandering sadhus)
has been preserved ever since, and an institution has grown up around
it, the Shilnath Dhuni Sansthan. A large temple has recently been com-
pleted, dwarfing the dhūnī itself. For many years the dhūnī was a gath-
ering place for singers of nirguṇ bhajans. Kumar Gandharva, the great
94 Bodies of Song
classical singer who lived in Dewas, used to sit there at night, listening
to and singing with the wanderers.27 Shilnath was so fond of bhajans that
he put together a large collection, printed in 1915 and reissued at various
points since then. The vast majority of poems in his book are attributed
to Kabir, with only a few carrying the names of Gorakhnath and other
Nath poets. There is a haunting story of how he decided (as great yogis are
able to do) on the moment of his death. Asking a disciple to sing Kabir’s
beautiful song Ham pardesī panchhī bābā (“I’m a bird from another coun-
try”), he expired as the song drew to a close.28 Combing through the first
one hundred poems of Shilnath’s collection, I found that all of them had
Kabir’s signature.
The investigation of sectarian associations and crisscrossing author-
ships could be similarly carried on with studies of Kabir in Sikh, Sufi,
Dadu Panthi, and other environments.
Fluidity Driven by Ideology

So far we have discussed ways in which natural variations in hearing,
memory, and other associative processes will alter oral Kabir texts; and
we have glimpsed a larger picture in which the contents of songs often
consist of modules—themes, metaphors, lines, passages—that are quite
portable. We have also seen that the practice of singing “Kabir” embraces
other poets with whom singers associate him. Thus different singers may
attribute the same poem to different poets. This book does not undertake a
full investigation of the historical and ideological networks that link Kabir
with one set of poets, traditions, and vocabularies here, another set there.
But we have hypothesized physical and cultural ecoregions in which oral
texts, mingling with written, recorded, and performed ones, produce a
Kabir with somewhat distinct colors and tendencies. As in a Venn dia-
gram, these regions overlap and can never be absolutely distinguished;
nevertheless, the differences are palpable. Another way in which the dif-
ferences can be traced is through sectarian ideologies.
Long ago I did a comparative study of three major textual traditions of
Kabir, located in three geographical regions and sectarian milieus (Hess
1987b). I found that the western collections based in Rajasthan were rich
in language and symbols associated with devotion to Krishna (including
Vaishnav names of God and expressions in a female voice of intimate rela-
tionship, in union and separation, with the divine lover), while the eastern
Bījak, associated with the Varanasi-based Kabir Panth, had very little language
of that sort. The other distinct western tradition—the Ādi Granth compiled
in the late sixteenth century by Sikhs in Punjab—along with relatively high
Krishnaite language, had more content supporting the guru-centered and
“plain-speaking,” nonrenunciant religious ideology of the Sikhs.
A wonderful example of sectarian influence on texts turns up in
Gurinder Singh Mann’s important work on the manuscript history of
Sikh scripture. The Goindval Pothis, assembled in the early 1570s, are
very close to the Ādi Granth as canonized in 1604, but also have intrigu-
ing differences. Mann has told me that there are three Kabir poems in
the Goindval Pothis of approximately 1572 that do not appear in the 1604
Ādi Granth or in any other old collection as far as he knows. These three
poems, as yet unstudied by scholars, now constitute the very earliest
manuscript appearance of Kabir. Mann has also revealed a fascinating
bit of information from his study of the earliest manuscripts. Two Kabir
poems were written into the 1604 Kartarpur Pothis but then crossed
out and excluded from the Granth forever after. Both were ulaṭbāṃsī,
“upside-down language” poems with outrageous, nonsensical, some-
times shocking imagery. Ulaṭbāṃsīs appear everywhere that one finds
oral and written Kabir, east and west. They belong to an older tradition
of mystical poetry using such enigmatic language in meaningful ways.29
One of the deleted poems from the Kartarpur manuscript seems to have
been particularly offensive to Sikh sensibility, depicting crazy mixed-up
family relations, with the opening line, “People, look at God’s betrothal.
The mother married her son and lived with her daughter.” Whoever
crossed it out wrote “useless” in the margin. The Sikh gurus apparently
had a strong preference for plain language and domestic propriety. They
also emphatically avoided anything that had even a whiff of tantric influ-
ence (Mann 2001, 114–15).
Examining the first hundred poems of the Nath anthology collected by the
renowned yogi Shilnath in Dewas,30 I found not a single Krishnaite name of
the divine—no Krishna, Hari, Madhav, or Govind, all of which appear abun-
dantly in the western manuscripts and occasionally, if rarely, in the Bījak.
In fact even rām—a common divine name in Kabir poetry everywhere—is
much rarer in the Nath anthology than elsewhere. The metrically equivalent
and religiously neutral nām (name) is preferred. There is not a single poem
in this set emphasizing viraha (a woman’s anguished separation from the
beloved). The word “beloved” appears once, but the context is a statement
that the beloved is in your own body. There is throughout the Nath anthol-
ogy, predictably, an emphasis on experience in the body.
96 Bodies of Song
If in various regions of India Kabir swims in a sea of Hindu or Nath

Yogi or Sikh or Kabir Panthi poets, in Pakistan he swims in a sea of Sufi
poets. I observed from recordings that Muslim singers tend to use a
series of dohās, rather than a bhajan preceded by one or more dohās, as
the structure of a song. On her Kabir album, Abida Parveen has a long
track called Man lāgo yār fakīrī meṇ. But rather than singing a version of
the well-known bhajan of this name, with its series of thematically linked
stanzas all ending with the same rhyme, Abida just uses the phrase Man
lāgo yār fakīrī meṇ as a refrain and goes on for sixteen minutes apparently
singing whatever dohās happen to arise for her. When the spirit moves her,
she sings the tag line, Man lāgo. At the end she sings the well-known con-
cluding stanza of the bhajan, kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādho, sāhib mile sabūrī
meṇ, man lago. Farid Ayaz also follows this kind of structure with the track
Maulā maulā, on the Kabir Project’s CD Kabir in Pakistan.
Documenting Sufi singers in Rajasthan and Pakistan, Shabnam
Virmani has noted various ways in which Kabir interpenetrates with Sufi
saint-poets. Thus in language, symbol, affect, text arrangements, and
narrative references, Kabir has affinities with Bulleh Shah, Shah Abdul
Latif, Sachal Sarmast, and the richly mixed Muslim-Hindu culture of the
Sindhi and Punjabi mystical love legends. All these observations invite
new research and discovery.
Religious traditions and sects have their ideologies and preferences. So
do individuals. Some singers have told me they prefer nām to rām and con-
sciously substitute the former for the latter. This indicates a more marked
disengagement from Vaishnav and saguṇ associations and may be linked to
a caste-related preference for the nirguṇ position (as discussed in chapter 1).
A direct announcement of such a change is heard on one of Prahladji’s
audio CDs. In a spoken introduction to a verse where the tambūrā, a musi-
cal instrument, stands for the human body, Prahladji mentions that the first
stanza as he learned it said, “First I meditate on Lord Ganapati (Ganesh)
and mother Sharada (Saraswati). Ram, please give your darśhan.” But, he
continues, “We prefer to sing satguru.” Throughout the song, he sings the
refrain with satguru in place of Ganapati and guru in place of Ram.31
Over a period of years, Kaluram Bamaniya (profiled in chapter 6) had
undergone a strong change of attitude toward the Kabir Panth in particu-
lar and Vaishnav Hinduism in general. He made a point of changing rām
to nām, even in well-known songs where everyone else sang rām. When
I met him in August 2012, he was also inclined to excise the name of
Dharamdas. So for instance, in a song that usually concludes kahe kabīr
dharamdās se (Kabir says to Dharamdas), he sang kahe kabīr samujhāī ke

(Kabir says, explaining). The rhyme and syllable count fit perfectly.
I too find myself tinkering with texts and translations if the versions
available to me give scope for choice. A very popular song begins with the
refrain, Moko kahāṇ dhūnḍhte re bande, maiṇ to tere pās meṇ, “Where are
you searching for me, friend? I’m right here.” All the lines have the same
rhyme, echoing “pās meṇ” (very close/right here). They make a series of
negative statements—I’m not in the temple, not in the mosque, not in holy
mountains and rivers, not in ritual, and so on. This structure is a setup for
the last line, which will make a positive statement. Our friends in Malwa
concluded the song with maiṇ to hūṇ vishvās meṇ, which means, “I am in
belief/faith.” That didn’t sit well with me. I was happy to discover that the
K. M. Sen text, reprinted in Dvivedi’s Kabīr, had a version that ended, Maiṇ
shvāsoṇ ke shvās meṇ—I am in the breath of the breath (Dvivedi 1971, 234).
As a Zen student who practiced meditation through awareness of breath,
I loved this, and it avoided what I considered the dangerous clichés of
“belief.” So even though the performers I worked with sang it the other
way, I decided it was all right to publish the text and translation in my pre-
ferred form. Of course there was a footnote explaining what I had done.
Similarly, there was a song that I transcribed from Prahladji in 2002: Jo
tu āyā gagan manḍal se, “If you come from the dome of the sky.” One of the
stanzas came out quite felicitously, I thought, in my translation:
If in your house
is a lovely spouse,
why do you knock
on a prostitute’s door?
Why walk away
from the cool shade
of a tree, to make your bed
on stones?
There is a four-way wordplay in nārī sukamnā, indicating both a lovely wife

and the body’s central energy-channel in yogic physiology.32 The Hindi
word for house is ghar. Sometime in the next year or so, Prahladji started
singing ghaṭ (body) instead of ghar. He declared that he liked this mean-
ing better, but to me it knocked out some of the levels of wordplay. It also
skewered my translation, which I was fond of. So I decided I would just
stick to his first version (with a footnote).
98 Bodies of Song
Shabnam had similar issues touching on poetry and meaning, once

she started singing herself. She tells how she changed a word because
it didn’t make sense within the parallel structure of the verses. She even
asked a young poet friend steeped in sant poetry and folk music to come
up with a new signature line for the same song, since she didn’t like the
one Prahladji used! According to her, Prahladji seemed to have thrown in
a chhāp from another song, but it didn’t fit and broke the mood and mean-
ing of the song.33
Shabnam and I both had ideological bones to pick with some of the
texts and contexts we encountered. There was a beautiful song whose
melody I came to love before I understood all the verses. It opened with a
simple refrain:
Lagan kaṭhin hai mere bhāī, guruji se lagan kathin hai mere bhāī.
Devotion is difficult, my brother. Devotion to the guru is difficult, my
brother.
Actually lagan is more than “devotion,” as explained below. The following

commentary, from a 2002 field notebook, shows how my discovery of the
troubling meaning of one stanza gave rise to a struggle between attraction
and repulsion that affected how I dealt with text:
I fell in love with the song, understanding only the refrain and hear-
ing the haunting melody with its long sustained notes at the ends of
lines. The refrain says, “lagan is difficult, my brother.” Translating
lagan is also difficult. It means devotion, dedication, concentration,
commitment, perseverance, determination, ability to stick to it to
the end. None of these by itself is an adequate translation. Lagan has
a literal sense of sticking, not letting go. It combines devotion (soft)
and dogged refusal to give up (tough). And the pronoun before
“brother”—my brother—in this particular tender and melancholy
melody with an undertone of fierceness—gives the song an extra
quality of sad sweetness. In other songs, the poet might admon-
ish the listener, the brother, to get his act together and stop being
a fool. But in this one, the singer feels the difficulty. He expresses
to himself and to his brother—the close one, the friend, the alter
ego—how very difficult it is to stick to the path of truth. (I prefer to
call it “truth,” but the song says “the guru.”) This path is before us.
We don’t know if we can do it. Yet, as we sometimes understand, we

don’t have any choice.
To follow this difficult path requires fearlessness. That is what
the successive verses illustrate. They present four conventional fig-
ures that all stand for fearless, unwavering devotion to one’s truth.
As I figure out the Hindi, my problems begin. These tropes rep-
resenting heroic ideals don’t fit with my culturally informed views.
Especially the one about the satī, the true and pure woman who is so
devoted to her deceased husband-lord that she leaps into his funeral
pyre without hesitation. This image of the satī, with its horrifying
social implications, has become abhorrent to many feminists. Do
I stop loving the song? Do I continue to love the song, with reser-
vations? With a large footnote detailing my ideological objections?
I opt for the footnote. Here is a translation of the song.
Holding fast is difficult, my brother.

Holding fast to the guru is difficult.
Without holding on, you can’t do
what must be done.
Your precious life moves on
toward death.
Desiring raindrops of svātī,

the cuckoo repeats,
My love! my love! She repeats,
Let me die of thirst right now!
I don’t want any other water.34
Casting off wealth and possessions,

the pure woman goes forth
to enact her purity.
Gazing at fire without fear
she leaps into the flames.
When two armies face off,

the warrior goes to battle.
Cut to pieces, he falls to earth,
but never runs from the field.
The deer who knows

the secret sound of the Word
100 Bodies of Song
sets out to hear.

Hearing the Word, he gives up his life
without the slightest fear.
Give up hope
in your body.
Fearlessly sing!
Kabir says, holding fast like that
you’ll naturally meet
the guru.
Holding fast to the guru is difficult,

my brother.
Flash-forward a few years. Shabnam has become a singer. Her love of

music was one of the factors that led her into this project in the first place.
It’s no surprise that she started learning the beautiful Malwi folk tunes and
singing the poetry along with our mentors in the field, above all Prahladji.
(See Figure 2.2) I did this too, immediately on starting my fieldwork. I
remember lying in a Dewas hotel room in early 2002, my little cassette
player plugged into my ears, singing Panchhīḍā bhāī over and over again
as I followed Prahladji’s voice, trying to get the enchanting melody right.
Figure 2.2. Shabnam and Prahladji singing together. Photo by Smriti Chanchani.
But with Shabnam things took a different turn. She had a strong, rich
voice, a musical gift, and some training. She took up the tambūrā and
learned to play it well. The first time Prahladji surprised her in a concert
by announcing that she would sing a bhajan, she was deeply embarrassed.
But there was no escape from him. He didn’t let go, and the rural audience
applauded insistently, wanting to hear what this camera-wielding woman
from Bangalore could do. They weren’t disappointed. After some quaver-
ing moments, she got into the spirit and belted it out as she had learned
to do from her folk gurus. The applause was uproarious. This habit of
calling for one bhajan, or two, continued. It took a while, but she got
used to it. Shabnam practiced at home. To sing the songs was inextricable
from her process of research and creation as a filmmaker. Her repertoire
grew—faster and faster as the songs became part of her. Friends started
sitting in on her singing sessions at home. They wanted to sing too, and
to hear her explanations of the poetry. They held up recording devices.
The gatherings, which they called satsangs, expanded. There was singing,
listening, discussion. Eventually someone who was organizing a Kabir fes-
tival in another city asked her to give a concert. Yes, they wanted the films,
yes, they wanted performances by folk artists Prahlad Tipanya, Mukhtiyar
Ali, and others they had met through the Kabir Project. But they wanted
her too—as filmmaker and singer.
Shabnam and I participate in the openness and flexibility of oral
tradition—which means we make choices that express our own ideological
and aesthetic preferences. We try to be responsible in our interventions,
but within certain limits we change and shape things. We do this in the pro-
cess of selecting, organizing, translating, and interpreting songs. Shabnam
now also does it as a performer. She ran into the satī problem with another
lovely song, Yūṇ hī man samajhāve—“Teach your mind like this.” Again,
there was a series of stanzas, this time about concentration, each with a rul-
ing metaphor. The metaphors were vivid and appealing: an acrobat climb-
ing a wire, singing while her husband beats the drum; a village girl carrying
a full water pot on her head; a snake that licks up dewdrops in the forest; a
pearl diver who plunges into the sea. But in the middle came that trouble-
some satī—the woman who single-mindedly enters the flames out of devo-
tion to her deceased husband.35 Shabnam decided she wouldn’t sing that
stanza. Dropping a stanza is common in oral tradition.
We told Prahladji about our problems with the satī metaphor and ideal.
He and others we spoke to didn’t buy into our critique. I once discussed
it with a group of educated women in a Kabir Panth gathering, explaining
102 Bodies of Song
why I thought this image should not be perpetuated. They disagreed. “We
are not fools,” they said, “we don’t plan to jump on our husbands’ funeral
pyres. We don’t believe widows should do that. To us, this image is about
courage and devotion. That’s what we take from it.” One of the women, the
wife of a highly placed official, went further in affirming gendered values
that were clearly different from mine: “To us Indian women, our husband
is everything.” While she and others present agreed that nobody believed
in widow immolation anymore, the inner principle of fearlessly entering
fire for one’s beloved inspired them. They wouldn’t accept my point that
the gendered nature of this trope still oppresses women.
In 2006 Shabnam organized a recording session in Lunyakhedi.
Prahladji sang Yūṇ hī man samajhāve, including the stanza about the
satī. Shabnam, who was creating a set of audio CDs for the Kabir Project,
decided to edit it out. A few years later I observed her responding differ-
ently to the same lines, under different circumstances. In the 2011 Malwa
Kabir Yatra (eight days of traveling and performing, mostly in villages), at
a moment of utter exhaustion when he was unexpectedly asked to sing in
the morning after a night with no sleep, Prahladji asked Shabnam to sing
along with him. He sang Yūṇ hī man samajhāve, including the satī verse.
When he got to that verse I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but then she
sang right along, supporting him.
Surfing, Globalizing
Shabnam’s four feature-length documentary films have been seen by
many thousands of people, and their reach continues to expand.36 The
Kabir Project’s ten audio CDs and one DVD of bhajan performance, with
accompanying books that provide texts and translations, have reached
many listeners. The next (and perhaps final) big task that the Kabir Project
team in Bangalore have taken up is an internet resource for which they
find the word “archive” a bit stuffy and antiquated. They sometimes call it
a web-duniyā, web-world, and they have named the site (using an image
from a bhajan) Ajab shahar—“Wondrous City.” It is cutting-edge, inter-
active, artistically beautiful and intriguing. One can follow its branch-
ing paths in multiple directions, clicking between singer, explicator, text,
translation, article. One can enter deeply into a keyword or theme. One
can toggle between urban and rural pandits. One can shuffle and be sur-
prised. One can browse for free, download songs for a fee, add comments
and new material. The team also imagines the site as an online directory
and web presence for many folk artists, helping to expand their perfor-
mance opportunities.
Was Kabir already globalizing when his poetry moved from the eastern
part of the Hindi region to Punjab and Rajasthan in the sixteenth century?
It has always been traveling; but we reserve the word “globalization” for
a much more recent sort of phenomenon, defined by exponential leaps
in speed, technological sophistication, and the arcane economic connec-
tions of transnational systems. In the globalizing conditions characterized
above all by the internet, texts move and change in startlingly new ways,
while continuing to move and change in old ways.
When did Prahladji’s transition into the global system begin? He
was a village man of a poor Dalit family, living at subsistence level, his
parents and wife unlettered. He managed to become more educated
than others in his family, got a job as a schoolteacher, and became fas-
cinated with a musical instrument, the tambūrā, which led to his learn-
ing to sing bhajans with other village men. So far, no globalization or
noteworthy intervention of technology. The Eklavya Kabir manch project
of the 1990s (see chapter 6) threw him into more prominence, giving
him a chance to show his leadership qualities and to get more recogni-
tion as a singer. But the recognition had started in the 1980s and was
already well advanced in 1990 when Dinesh Sharma began organizing
the Kabir manch.
A watershed moment occurred in 1993 with the Eklavya forum’s pro-
duction of two cassettes of Malwi Kabir bhajans. One had a mix of different
singers. The other featured Prahladji and his group. The latter became very
popular. Soon more Tipanya cassettes came out, produced first by a small
company in Jabalpur, then by an outfit in Bhopal. They were hits. His local
fame spread far faster than it could have without the “new media.” Many
people in nearby districts started to hum his versions of Kabir. As his con-
certs multiplied, they had the added buzz of offering familiar songs, old
favorites that people knew from the cassettes. Prahladji’s economic status
changed dramatically. Typically the cassette company would give him a
lump sum at the outset, avoiding the complexity of royalties. These sums
were of an order beyond what could have been injected into the family
economy at any time in the past. But expenses were also mounting. For
example, he needed a large car to get to all his engagements, along with
his group and their instruments.
104 Bodies of Song
When I first met Prahladji in January 2000, I got half a dozen cas-
settes as gifts. In 2002 I made a list of twelve cassettes with their contents.
Prahladji’s home and the adjacent Kabir institute were steadily expanding.
March 16, 2002, Lunyakhedi

A phone call came—someone asking for a performance. P. explained to
the caller what the cost would be, including fuel for the car and something
for the mandalī. Then we walked to the smārak (Kabir memorial) ground,
where he showed me holes that had been dug for pillars for a hall that he
plans to build. “Visiting sants will give talks. Lots of people will come.” He
said he’d finance it with a cassette, which could make. . . . He cited a range
of figures. “That much?” I asked. “My cassettes do very well,” he said with
a smile.
March 18, 2002, Dewas

As I sit on the Srishti Club terrace at 8 a.m., Vijay Kumar, the cleaner,
approaches with his broom to see what I’m reading. I tell him about Kumar
Gandharva. He’s heard the name but doesn’t know anything about him. He
starts talking about Tipanyaji, who was here yesterday—I introduced them.
He knows Tipanyaji’s songs from the cassettes. He can sing them.37
Prahladji became a role model for younger men. Singing Kabir had not
been prestigious before, in fact was a mark of low status. Seeing his grow-
ing success and prestige, they were attracted to doing the same.38
March 19, 2002, Lunyakhedi

I woke up from a nap to find a jam session going on in the next room.
A singer from a nearby village was jamming with Devnarayan, our violin-
ist, and a dholak player. The singer, Dayaram Sarolia, was showing them on
the harmonium how he wanted to do the tune and repetitions—up on the
middle rep, then down. He sang well. A panchāyat secretary, he started by
listening to Prahladji, then came in person to learn from him, now sings
on radio and TV. Immediately he told me he’d like to go to America.
December 2010, Berkeley

Dayaram called me from India. “I’ve got my passport made,” he said. “Oh,
very good,” I replied. “All I need now is a call from you.” I explained that
I can’t just call people to America, and that Prahladji’s visits were made pos-
sible by support from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
When I organized Prahladji’s first American tour in 2003, it was a

great success. Indians in the United States were extremely enthusiastic,
as were a lot of non-Indian Americans in the general public and the aca-
demic world. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, described as an
independent but government-funded agency, sponsored the tour, cover-
ing the group’s international airfare. We created a CD to offer for sale,
since that technology was fast replacing cassettes. Proud of myself for
being the mover and shaker behind Prahladji’s first performances abroad,
I was in for a surprise when I arrived in Malwa in July to prepare for the
tour. “We’re going to England,” he announced as I stepped off the bus
into the monsoon mud in Maksi. “What? When?” “August.” Someone
had invited him to an Indian music festival in London. The whole trip
would last just a week. And that would be his first performance abroad.
So I wasn’t the creator of his new international persona. I was just part of
a wave that was carrying him forward. Shabnam, in the first year of inten-
sive work on her documentary film project, joined us for three weeks in
2003, shooting scenes from this historic arrival of Malwi folk Kabir in
America. In 2009 Prahladji and group had another two-month tour in
the United States and Canada. This time Shabnam was an integral part of
the tour, as her four major films had just been completed. Screenings and
discussions of the films took place along with concerts. Cassettes were
dead. We sold many CDs and DVDs. (See Figure 2.3)
Figure 2.3. Audio and video CD covers. Photo by Linda Hess.

106 Bodies of Song
The interpenetration of urban and rural singing cultures, and the explo-
sion of interregional as well as international communication, have quickly
created complex new situations in terms of text, context, transmission, and
interpretation. My examples come from the ongoing and transforming
Kabir Project; similar examples can no doubt be found in other realms
of Indian performance. After six years of research, shooting, recording,
editing, and production, Shabnam and her coworkers completed the Kabir
Project’s first phase: four feature-length documentaries; ten audio CDs and
one DVD with performances by eleven featured singers and their accom-
panists; and six beautifully designed books providing texts, translations,
photos, art, and commentary, to go with the recorded songs. Well before
these products were finished, the singers and songs she was discovering
were capturing attention in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and other metros.
Shabnam herself was singing and explicating on public stages. In 2010,
responding to numerous requests, she recorded her own two-CD set.
Kabir festivals have been organized in many cities, bringing together
films, live performances, speakers, seminars. Committed to making the
project available to non-English-speakers, Shabnam has produced versions
of all the films with English portions dubbed in Hindi. In February 2010 there
was a nine-day Malwa Kabir Yatra (Malwa Kabir Journey), jointly planned
with local singers, Kabir Panthis, and NGO workers, moving through vil-
lages and towns with concerts, film screenings, and discussions, in Malwa,
where the earliest and deepest connections to date had been made with local
Kabir oral traditions. It aroused great interest and enthusiasm. Many urban
fans joined the journey. A second Malwa Kabir Yatra, which I attended,
took place over eight days in April 2011. Again a contingent of urban Indian
and international enthusiasts joined the eight-day trek through six villages
and two cities, traveling by bus in sometimes grueling conditions along
with artists and organizers. A Rajasthan Kabir Yatra in 2012 was beauti-
fully described in Vipul Rikhi’s article “Travels Through Song” (http://www.
openthemagazine.com/article/photographic/travels-through-song). These
yātrās, the big-city festivals, the proliferating new audio, video, and internet
resources, have contributed to the growth of urban Kabir fans, including
some who learn to sing and play the tambūrā. Prahladji, Mukhtiyar Ali, and
others have frequently been called to Mumbai, Bangalore, and other cities
to coach such groups. Hitesh Shah, one of the Mumbai enthusiasts, wrote
to me: “We had a workshop with Prahladji at Priti’s place. He is far more
riveting in his commentary on the songs, than when merely singing them.
Astounding understanding in three hours.” Later I met Hitesh again at a
four-day workshop in Prahladji’s village, using the facilities of the Kabir

institute there.
Beyond Malwa, Shabnam has worked with singers in Rajasthan,
Pakistan, and Kutch in Gujarat. Some of those singers were featured in her
films. Others came forth after the films were finished. She learned songs
from all the areas and sang some of her favorites to friends in other areas.
Mukhtiyar Ali and Mahesha Ram from Rasjasthan, Prahladji and Kaluram
from Malwa, Muralala from Kutch, and Fariduddin Ayaz from Karachi
met each other and performed together at urban Kabir festivals. They
started occasionally singing each other’s songs, bringing melodies from
other regions into their own home areas. One night in Lunyakhedi, I saw
Vijay, Prahladji’s second son, lead a mandalī of younger-generation singers
in a powerful rendition of Allah Hu, which he had learned from Mukhtiyar
Ali in person and through the Kabir Project films and recordings.
Perhaps my capacity to be shocked by wild new mixes of genres, styles,
artists, and media will end soon, but I was still astonished by this one.
Bhanwari Devi is a Rajasthani woman singer with a supremely powerful
voice and mesmerizing energy whom I met in 2011 on a tour of Rajasthani
villages with Gopal Singh. To me, her vocal power and extroversion were
in dramatic contrast with her observance of the rural Rajasthani custom
that women keep their faces covered in public: she sang through a layer
of sari-cloth pulled entirely over her face. Bhanwari Devi became one of
the most popular performers in the ensuing Kabir Yatras in Malwa and
Rajasthan. In 2013 someone sent me a link to a performance on Coke Studio,
a very popular music TV show in Pakistan and India that mingles tradi-
tional folk music with rock and post-rock styles, singers, and instruments.
There Bhanwari Devi (her face covered with red sari cloth, over which
headphones were placed) belted out a Kabir song to rocking amplified
instrumentation (along with her son on harmonium). More far out: she
was in a jugalbandī or duet with Hard Kaur (say the Punjabi-appearing
name out loud and note the pun), a tattooed woman rap artist in tank top
and skinny pants, who belted out her hiphop lyrics in English. The two
women took turns doing passages from their songs (https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=npKCgowu-Bk). The composer-arranger of this combo,
Ram Sampath, explained in a “behind the music” video clip that he saw it
as a song about two “outlaws”: “Both of these women . . . [have] big voices,
they’re not going to step back, they’re not going to tone down their voices
for anyone. I just had to get these two energies together and watch it blaze
108 Bodies of Song
down the highway.” In the short “behind the music” video, Bhanwari Devi
appears with her face uncovered, smiling broadly.
In 2011 the extraordinary Baul singer from Bengal, Parvathy Baul, joined
the last three days of the Malwa Kabir Yatra, then came to Lunyakhedi for
two days to begin learning Malwa Kabir songs from Prahladji (see http://
parvathybaul.srijan.asia). During the yātrā she performed in what would
have been, for the locals, a strange Bengali language and style, but audi-
ences in village and city responded very positively. I was in Lunyakhedi
with her on those two quiet days after the tumultuous yātrā. She sat with
Prahladji and other family members, who were impressed with how
swiftly she learned their songs and sang them in her rich voice. On the
second night the families of the three brothers, including all the women
and children, gathered in front of the main house. Parvathy put on her
ankle bells, tied the drum around her waist, raised her ektārā, and danced
and sang, her bare feet on the packed earth, her long dreadlocked hair fly-
ing along with her voice, mingling with drumbeats and the twang of the
ektārā string. In the darkness and quiet of the village, ripples of delight
went through the group. She also stood and sang out one of the new Kabir
songs she had learned. The next morning at 5 a.m., she and I got into a
hired car and set off for the Indore airport, two hours away, to fly to our
next engagements.
Thus texts and tunes are traveling across far-flung regions suddenly—by
air as much as on the ground. There has always been movement of songs
from region to region, but it has never been this fast—texts and styles
coming whole cloth, not piecemeal and gradual as in the past, when they
might be altered bit by bit on the road till they lost the signs of their origin
in another place. The bullock-cart of oral transmission has turned into a
supersonic plane.39
Actually metaphors of physical vehicles can’t carry the weight—and the
weightlessness—of transmission in the twenty-first century. Many clips
from documentary films and live performances are on YouTube. People
all over the world pick up songs that ten years ago existed nowhere except
in local oral tradition. They transcribe in their own ways, translate, post
on websites, add information according to their own lights. The gallop-
ing fluency of younger people with cell phone technology in rural India
is now a huge factor in the spread of texts and performances. Prahladji’s
village did not even have landline phone service in 2002. A decade later,
the little boys I knew in the family have grown up to be strapping fellows
in their twenties who are ripping performances from Shabnam’s films and
sending them by MMS to others in the neighborhood, or across state lines.

MMS? I hadn’t heard of it till I found out in 2011 that Dharmendra, the
shy son of Kamla and Ambaram, who was having trouble passing school
exams as a twelve-year-old, was now an expert at MMS transmission. He
sang onstage with his uncle Prahladji, played harmonium, and moved
with confidence in larger worlds, his sunglasses flashing, his mobile at
the ready. He shot with the video camera during tours. After the 2010
Malwa Yatra, Prahladji’s older son and dholak player Ajay reported that
the hottest new thing in local ringtones was Shabnam singing Kabir! By
2012, Dharmendra and many other young village friends had established
Facebook pages.40
Listeners are also participating in this new freedom and immediacy
of transmission. Countless people use cell phones as a way of engag-
ing with music. They record, play, download and share performances.
Scholars have noted the democratizing effects of mass media. In Cassette
Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (1993), Peter Manuel
observed how audiocassettes, easily producible by small local companies
and copied by consumers, gave considerable control in the circulation and
enjoyment of music to people of all classes. He also noted that economic
and political interests were mobilizing to reduce freedom of access and
exchange.41
The internet and mobile phones have raised the play of these factors
exponentially. As this book goes to press, we can glimpse the vanguard
of a new kind of research in a paper called “Folk Music in India Goes
Digital” (Kumar, Singh, and Parikh 2011). Neha Kumar and colleagues
studied four sites in the Hindi region that are rich in folk music, including
Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, where most of my research is based. They spoke
to musicians, listeners, retailers, and radio producers, focusing on these
questions:
(i) What are various motivations underlying the sharing and listening of
folk music within these communities?
(ii) How are new media technologies influencing these practices and
supporting these motivations?
(iii) How do considerations of piracy interact with these changes?
Their ten-page article suggests that in a period of just three to five years,
great changes have occurred in producing, consuming, selling, sharing,
and performing folk music.
110 Bodies of Song
In the furthest reaches of India’s rural heartland, the cellphone

is bringing something that television, radio and even newspapers
couldn’t deliver: Instant access to music, information, entertain-
ment, news and even worship. (Bellman quoted in Kumar, Singh,
and Parikh 2011, 2)
They learned that mobile phone shops in small rural towns now
keep media libraries on a desktop computer, offering music collections
as a perk for other purchases. Shop owners often upload their custom-
ers’ music libraries before downloading new music. CDs and cassettes
have been pushed out of the market. “We stopped keeping tapes . . .
four years ago,” said one owner. “No one wants CDs anymore. Only
mobile.” Another owner who had been in the business a long time
said, “The market of CDs and audio cassettes has gone down by 85%
in the last 3–5 years.” Meanwhile the demand for video is shooting
up. “Five years back,” said a retailer, “people were only interested in
listening to music on cassettes, radio, and CDs, but now people are
demanding music with video. They don’t buy if you don’t give them
songs recorded with video.” Some shop owners work with local musi-
cians to produce video CDs (quotations in this paragraph from Kumar,
Singh, and Parikh 2011, 6).
The researchers learned that mobile phones also act as communal lis-
tening devices with friends and families listening together. They observed
pilgrims who walked 200 kilometers to Rajasthan’s annual Ramdevra
festival (which draws 1 to 1.5 million, about half of whom choose to walk).
A huge proportion of those pilgrims were listening through earphones
to devotional songs on their mobile phones as they walked.
They found that the musicians were ambivalent about piracy:
Piracy leads to illegal but wider distribution of music and therefore

also serves to extend the popularity and fame of many musicians. . . .
[O]‌ne Bikaner artist said: “Singers are still on the safe side because
when people record our music on their mobile devices at any live
performance, it spreads like fire. People get to know about our good
performance only through these devices and we get publicity as well
as more shows to perform at. On the one hand, the CD and cassette
business has gone down, but on the other, the demand for our live
performances is rising” (Kumar, Singh, and Parikh 2011, 7).
Finally, they reported comments suggesting both a decrease in quality of

music and an increase in empowerment of musicians:
With the availability of low-cost and easy-to-use recording devices,

the technological skills and capacity required for producing and
distributing music need not be limited only to local businesses.
Musicians and/or their troupes and families can be empowered to
create, share, and market their own recordings. This would allow
more musicians (and not just the more famous ones) to get their
music into the market. . . . Due to the increase in piracy and low-cost
distribution, the quality of music the community is listening to has
. . . suffered. Access to a much wider variety of musicians, recordings
and recording qualities may also lead to a less cultivated sense of taste
and thoughtful listening. As an artist from Bikaner stated: “Those
who have 500 songs in their mobiles are constantly changing songs
without paying attention to any particular song. They don’t know
what to listen to” (Kumar, Singh, and Parikh 2011, 8).
From YouTube to WikiLeaks to policy debates on net neutrality, we see

the internet as a source of tremendous power and as a ground of new con-
testations. Democratic, egalitarian, and class-transcending forces partake
of this power, as do totalizing, repressive, and exploitative ones. Focusing
down to Kabir music and texts in early twenty-first-century India (as in
a Google map, when we zoom from a huge satellite view to a neighbor-
hood), we can say that the democratizing effects of digital technology, with
all their turbulent and unpredictable turns, are in the foreground.42 How
will these instantaneous, local, and global media change the ways in which
Kabir texts are transmitted and altered, the people who have power over the
texts, and the economic factors that play into the process? Will the arrival
and dominance of electronic media be comparable to older transitions in
the history of media and transmission? Will there be fundamental differ-
ences? These are questions to be taken up by a new generation of scholars.
3
True Words of Kabir

Adventures in Authenticity
sāncha śhabda kabīr kā, hriday dekhu bichārā

chit de ke samujhe nahi, mohi kahata juga chārā
Kabir’s true word—

look in your heart and think.
They strain their brains but can’t understand.
I’ve been saying this for ages.1
After so much discussion of the fluidity, immensity, and creative

complexity of oral traditions, can we pass on without mentioning the
question of authenticity? No, we can’t, even though the very word
“authenticity” is a booby trap for scholars of Kabir. Determination to
establish a critical edition and stake out an authentic corpus is associ-
ated with Orientalist scholarship, best left behind in the twentieth (if
not the nineteenth) century. Yet we can’t escape the discussion. While
deconstruction, postcoloniality, and reception theory have undermined
old notions of authorship and authenticity, more subtle and multilay-
ered notions are still interesting.2 Either “Kabir” is a vast undifferen-
tiated mishmash of everything ever associated with his name in the
last 600 years, or some further process of clarification is possible. This
chapter reflects on ways of imagining such a process. On the razor-edge
path between claiming to have an authoritative edition and refusing to
discuss the matter, we will observe various discourses of authenticity
and see where they lead.3
The urge toward authenticity is powerful. When discussing texts sung
by folk singers, or citing lines of poetry in a talk, I am frequently asked,
“Is this authentic? How can we know what Kabir really composed?” Most
True Words of Kabir 113
people assume that there should be a way to discriminate among the cen-
turies of accumulating “Kabir” texts, but criteria for doing so remain stub-
bornly elusive. Text editors anchor historical claims to early manuscripts.
Common sense suggests modern language and anachronism as tip-offs
to the inauthentic. Ideology inclines some readers to accept and others to
reject the same material, depending on what they happen to believe about
Kabir. This chapter will demonstrate methods, findings, and conclusions
characteristic of several approaches: (a) studying manuscripts with a view
to establishing the earliest verifiable textual records and the subsequent
history of texts; (b) attempting to trace intertextualities between written
and oral sources; (c) immersing oneself in oral traditions; (d) tracing the
metamorphoses of Kabir through historical documents and ethnographic
inquiries, with no attempt to find the “real” Kabir; and (e) imagining a
large field in which these approaches exist together and sometimes com-
municate with each other. As a prologue to these explorations, I offer three
stories.
A Scholar Changes His Mind

In 1995 Bahadur Singh, an Indian scholar based at the University of
Hamburg, Germany, went to Rajasthan to collect oral Kabir. He found
Kabir singers in almost every village in the widespread areas he visited.
Having recorded 300 songs, he was in the process of transcribing them
when he gave a report at a conference in 1997. In his conference paper,
amid observations about songs and singers, he says: “For those of us who
are interested in Sant literature the most important question is of course
that of authenticity.” Then he compares the text of a song recorded by clas-
sical singer Kumar Gandharva with the versions of two rural Rajasthani
singers. Noting that the Rajasthani singers included four lines that were
absent in Kumarji’s version, he wonders how to prove whether or not these
four lines are “genuine.” His concluding sentence: “A fundamental aim of
future research has to be to develop criteria of authenticity” (Offredi 2000,
419–23).
In a later conference paper on the same research (presented in 1999,
published in 2002), Singh is still concerned about authenticity but empha-
sizes the near-impossibility of establishing it: “In the huge majority of texts,
at any rate those orally transmitted, there can be no proof of authenticity or
inauthenticity” (Horstmann 2002, 196). He suggests that in the world of
114 Bodies of Song
oral Kabir, we should renounce our historical cravings and inquire instead
into meanings and criteria as understood by singers and devotees:
The historical point of view . . . has no meaning for the Kabir devo-
tees; to them Kabir was a seer and therefore . . . he could, quite natu-
rally, have spoken with Mira or with Gorakhnath. . . . He could also
have foreseen the arrival of rail technology and composed a song
where the body is the engine, and the soul-passenger is advised not
to lose her ticket. (Horstmann 2002, 195–96)4
When Singh asked a blind sadhu singer how he knew that a vāṇī (utter-
ance) was really Kabir’s own, the singer replied: “If a vāṇī has a pro-
found meaning, then of course it is Kabir’s; if not, it is only an imitation”
(Horstmann 2002, 197).
If Bahadur Singh had stuck to research based on written texts, his
assumptions about the importance of authenticity in the narrow sense
might have remained intact. But he went into the field, where he awak-
ened to new worlds of text, context, performance, and interpretation. He
concluded that our methods of study should be different for these different
domains. In the world of oral performance we should be ethnographers,
inquiring into the understandings of singers and devotees and dropping
the quest for original utterances of Kabir. He leaves open the possibility
that in the world of dated manuscripts and critical editions, we can still
pursue what is genuine.
The Super-Bijak
The Mahābījak is a huge tome assembled by Gangasharan Shastri, a
high-ranking mahant (religious authority and ritual officiant) of the Kabir
Chaura (Varanasi-based) division of the Kabir Panth. This tradition has
long accepted the Bījak as Kabir’s mūl granth (root, i.e., original text),
the only indisputably authentic collection. The Bījak is a small book. So
what inspired Shastri to make this very large book, which was published
in 1998?
First, Kabir Panthis felt the same tension that Bahadur Singh and I and
others who have looked at oral and written traditions have felt. Kabir’s pop-
ularity throughout North and Central India has little to do with the poems
of the Bījak or the Granthāvalī or any other early written collection.5 The
vast body of bhajans has almost no overlap with the Bījak. How can the
Panth acknowledge and tap into Kabir’s popularity and power in the living
culture? They also felt something that might be called sectarian book-envy.
Other sects and religions have big books, Shastri observed, and we should
also have a big book. In this passage from his introduction (translated
from Hindi), he tacitly abandons the position that the Bījak is the only
authentic text:
Shri Sadguru Kabir Sahab . . . has composed countless verses, filled

with countless kinds of wisdom. Never having been collected in one
volume, these verses are published only in many small books. Since
his compositions have never been fully collected in one place, we
haven’t had access to the fullness of Kabir Sahab’s wisdom. In the
Kabir Panth we felt the need for one complete volume containing
all the verses. The problem was: among the thousands of verses
attributed to Kabir, how to select the genuine ones? We have been
working on the Mahābījak continuously for the past fifteen years. . . .
Especially the Kabir Panthis from Punjab and Jammu-Kashmir
urged us, saying that the other sects that came up after us have
served their people by collecting all their sacred verses into one vol-
ume. But we haven’t managed to collect the works of Kabir Sahab,
the founder of the entire sant tradition. What a shameful matter this
is! So many little sects that don’t even have any philosophy have still
managed to pull all their compositions into one volume. (Shastri
1998, iii–iv)
On June 26, 2002, I discussed the Mahābījak with Shastri.
Linda Hess (LH): Do you consider everything in the Mahābījak authentic

[pramāṇik]?
GANGASHARAN Shastri (GSS): Yes, everything is authentic.
LH: Where did you get all that material?
GSS: I spent 25–30 years searching and collecting. I used manuscripts,
printed and oral sources, and collections from other sects like the
Dadu, Niranjani, and Sikh Panths.
LH: How did you decide what to accept and what to reject?
GSS: I accepted [a text] if it was in accord with the principles [siddhānt] of
Kabir. There were also linguistic considerations [bhāṣā vigyān]—whether
116 Bodies of Song
the language was old or not. But even if the language was modern, if
the ideas [vichārdhārā] were correct I might still accept it.6
The Mahābījak made its way to Kalapini Komkali, a classical singer,

the daughter and disciple of the late Kumar Gandharva (see Hess 2009a).
Since childhood Kalapini has been steeped in the Kabir bhajans her father
was famous for singing. While doing fieldwork for the present book, I was
also writing a book about Kabir and Kumar Gandharva, a project in which
she and other family members were giving invaluable help. Once she
asked me to look for a collection of songs by Dharamdas. I found one at
Damakheda, Chhattisgarh, the headquarters of the Kabir Panth lineage
that reveres Dharamdas as Kabir’s original disciple and founder of the
Panth. I then got a copy of the Mahābījak from Kabir Chaura, Varanasi,
a rival lineage, and presented the two books to Kalapini and her nephew
Bhuvan, also a classical singer in Kumar Gandharva’s tradition. The
next time we met, they announced that both books were largely useless,
because they were full of inauthentic texts. The Dharamdas book, Kalapini
said, was rife with modern language and influence of film songs. Bhuvan
scanned the Mahābījak and came up with the same judgment: inauthen-
tic. He offered a dramatic example. The Mahābījak includes a poem that
begins with this couplet:
vo jo garbha mẽ dukh thā jabar / tujhe yād ho ke na yād ho

āyā thā tū tab kaval kar / tujhe yād ho ke na yād ho. (Shastri 1998, 785)
In the womb, when you felt that strong pain—do you remember or not?
You made a promise, then you came out—do you remember or not?
The poem continues with eight more couplets, each of which ends with the
half-line tujhe yād ho ke na yād ho—“Do you remember or not?” This, Kalapini
and Bhuvan informed me, was a blatant copy of a ghazal, Tumhe yād ho ke
na yād ho, that the singer Begum Akhtar (1914–74) had recorded and made
famous.7 The alleged Kabir bhajan and the ghazal both begin with the relative
pronouns vo jo and have the same metrical pattern, repeating the same phrase
in the refrain. But the rest of the bhajan text is filled with typical Kabir themes
and images, while the ghazal follows typical motifs of that genre.8 To Kalapini
and Bhuvan this showed that the book was not worth taking seriously. To an
archaeologist of the Kabir tradition, however, it is quite interesting. Through
such shards of evidence, we can begin to say something historically credible
about the ways in which oral traditions develop and change.
Bhuvan offered another hypothesis: that the prevalence of certain Urdu

words like divānā and mastānā (both meaning “mad” or “ecstatic”) in Kabir
songs was due to the influence of Urdu poetry in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. I did a quick check on this by consulting the Millennium
Kabir (Callewaert 2000), where texts are sorted according to their appear-
ance in early dated manuscripts. In manuscripts of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, I found that divānā occurs with some regular-
ity. So at least that word cannot be linked to the influence of recent Urdu
poetry, though there might still be merit in Bhuvan’s theory that ghazals
and other Urdu musical-poetic forms influenced oral Kabir from the nine-
teenth century onward.
One could dig up many examples of how things get added to the grow-
ing corpus of Kabir vāṇī. But even after throwing out all the film songs
and other flagrantly looted items, we will still be casting about, looking for
some sieve through which we can pass the myriad things that supposedly
“Kabir says.”
Trapped by Authenticity
I gave a talk at the Sahitya Akademi in 2002 in which I took up the debates
about authenticity. My intention was to discuss discourses of authenticity,
not to determine what is really authentic. But I did not do a good job of
this. Journalists reported that I was pressing the search for the authentic
Kabir, and some scholars who were present reacted as if I were the ghost
of nineteenth-century Indology. One person suggested that I should try
thinking about social history. Flustered, I replied that my whole project
was about the social life of Kabir. This fact, I realized later, was rendered
invisible by my decision to talk on that occasion about the problem of
authenticity.
The Hindi scholars of Kabir I have known in the last fifteen years have
been extremely dubious if not downright hostile toward critical editing
projects, which are redolent of colonial histories and attitudes. At the
Sahitya Akademi meeting, the idea of searching for a “core” met with skep-
ticism. Jokes were made about Winand Callewaert’s star system, in which
he rates poems from early manuscripts with one, two, or three stars, to
indicate their proximity to an early core of Kabir texts (to be discussed
in detail in the next section). Those in attendance were willing to vote in
a lighthearted way when I offered a set of verses and asked them to say
118 Bodies of Song
which ones could or could not be by Kabir. They did have opinions about
the nature of Kabir’s voice. But if we had tried to establish criteria, the
discussion would have been very contentious.
Reading, Writing, Dating:

The World of Text Editors
“I can understand that a translator of Kabir may look for a nice song
without bothering about its authenticity. But let us not start writ-
ing commentaries on Kabir and 15th-century Banaras quoting those
songs.”
(Callewaert 2000, vii)
“If there is a way to find order in the chaos, it is by looking at the

earliest mss.” (ibid., 104)
Not only do scholars strongly prefer to work with written texts (as dis-
cussed in c hapter 2), but a major industry in the economy of textual study
has been to establish correct texts where multiple forms exist. The prac-
tice of producing critical editions has a robust history among European
and North American scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
South Asians have also been serious text editors, a famous example being
the nineteen-volume critical edition of the Mahābhārata, produced over a
period of five decades by a team of scholars headed by V. S. Sukhtankar at
the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, India.9
In recent decades there has been a transition in the premises under-
lying text-editing projects. Basically, the idea of an urtext is going away.
From a determination to establish a singular authoritative text—as much
as possible, the text actually composed by the author—the enterprise
of critical editing has become a historical one that aims to show how a
body of texts has developed, with ever-weakening claims to “authenticity.”
J. S. Hawley, ahead of the curve in this trend, demonstrated a historical
approach to Surdas manuscripts in an article originally published in 1979
(later included in Hawley 2005). Kenneth Bryant provides a brilliant and
mature statement of the position in his introduction to the monumental
edition and translation of poetry attributed to Surdas (Bryant and Hawley
2015). After showing how editors discover multiple versions of the same
poem, he asks and answers these crucial questions:
Which version is “right,” “original,” or “better”? Which one was sung

by a man named Surdas, or might he indeed have sung all eleven,
or none? And how might we decide? And why might we care?
The traditional approach to answering such questions rests on the
assumption of an authorial original surviving in imperfect copies,
which the scholar corrects so as to restore the text the author intended.
This does not apply in the case of Sur. While many manuscripts avail-
able in India today bear the famous title, no two are remotely the
same. There is in fact no “original” Sūrsāgar to be reconstructed.
The picture that emerges instead from the early manuscript evi-
dence is of a steadily evolving and proliferating oral tradition. Poems
were taught by singer to singer, and the corpus of poems known
to the tradition grew rapidly from generation to generation. This
growth occurred through two processes: the composition of new
poems, and the accretion to the “Surdas” corpus of poems previously
ascribed to other, less famous poets. Along with the constant addi-
tion of “new” poems, the manuscripts also reflect a ceaseless trans-
formation of the old: each poem appears in almost as many different
versions as there are manuscripts that contain it. For the most part
these versions differ in ways that suggest, not the careless errors of
scribes, but the exuberant and imaginative improvisations of sing-
ers. (Bryant and Hawley 2015, xxvi–xxvii)
A similar trend in Kabir text study is reflected in the title of a recent

paper by Jaroslav Strnad: “Searching for the Source or Mapping the
Stream?: Some Text-critical Issues in the Study of Medieval Bhakti.”
Strnad foregrounds the metaphor of “mapping” in contrast with “source”:
It can be argued that this kind of variation is closely related to the

predominantly performative character of many poems—either
authored by the sants themselves or inspired by them and composed
by others. It may be futile to search for the “authentic” or original
version of a particular poem that has come down to us embedded
in the broad current of a living tradition borne for centuries by pre-
dominantly oral and performative presentations that involve a sig-
nificant degree of improvisation. Rather than looking for Ur-texts,
philological and comparativist methods might be used to map the
dynamic flows—the cross- and undercurrents—that constitute, in
the long term, a particular tradition (Strnad forthcoming).10
120 Bodies of Song
Strnad cites Finnish scholar Lauri Honko (2000), applying his theory
of “organic variation” between oral and written traditions to the study of
Kabir manuscripts:
In an oral tradition there may be more than one authorial version

and, of course, more than one variant of each of these several autho-
rial versions in consequence of their having been presented by
still other performers before their different audiences. The extant
Kabirian texts incorporated into different collections . . . reflect this
orality-based diversity. Yet the texts that have come down to us in
the manuscripts appear to be products not only of oral traditions
but of written ones as well—two traditions, sometimes parallel and
sometimes intersecting.
Under such circumstances, any attempt by authors of “critical
editions” to arrive at the original version of a poem (an Ur-text)
amounts to little more than the addition of another variant to the
already existing ones. Actually, the structure of the pad, with its
relatively free ordering of more or less self-contained distichs, is an
ideal form for variation through interpolations and/or elisions, as
the need may be, of lines, distichs, and even larger blocks of text.
These can emphasize, dilute or subtly modify the basic idea of the
pad without destroying its internal coherence. (Strnad forthcoming)
Callewaert’s premise, cited above, still holds. If we want to treat Kabir as

a historical figure—if we want to make any statement about his life, times,
thought, and compositions—we have to grapple with the written records
and begin to sort out the old from the recent (which, for manuscript schol-
ars, is virtually equivalent to separating the core from the marginal). On
this assumption a series of scholars in India and abroad have taken on
the task of collecting, analyzing, and editing manuscripts, often provid-
ing introductions, notes, and charts that present their understanding of
manuscript histories. Some of them seem to be aiming at uncovering an
original and authentic Kabir. Others are aware that they are undertaking a
historical project that can never reach back to the “original Kabir,” though
none has stated that position as unequivocally and radically as Bryant has
done for Surdas.
Significant names in the history of Kabir textual scholarship include
Shyamsundar Das (1928), P. N. Tiwari (1961), Shukdev Singh (1972), Charlotte
Vaudeville (1974, 1982, 1993), Winand Callewaert with collaborators Swapna
Sharma and Dieter Taillieu (2000), and Jaroslav Strnad (2013).11 All of them
assembled collections, with varying amounts of scholarly apparatus, that
were supposed to be more reliable than the vast and uncontrolled popular
Kabir traditions. Scholars who used multiple sources divided their collec-
tions into groups by various criteria, such as date, region, or context (sec-
tarian or courtly). They created concordances; compared poems, lines, and
words; and devised formulas to determine a credible body of texts. Vaudeville
worked with Tiwari’s edition, but she granted that its value is limited because
it does not discriminate between old and recent collections. Shyamsundar
Das, one of the towering twentieth-century historians of Hindi literature,
edited the 1928 Kabīr Granthāvalī based on a single Rajasthani manuscript,
which he thought was written in 1504. The colophon later proved to be false,
but everyone agrees that it is an old and important manuscript. Callewaert,
Sharma, and Taillieu (2000) have edited in a truly critical way despite prob-
lems in the production of their final publication.12 Strnad, working on one
of the most important texts provided by Callewaert, has carried the process
to a new level of careful detail.
All of the scholars mentioned above except Shukdev Singh focused
their attention on manuscripts from western India. In discussions of
Kabir’s written traditions, it has been common to speak of western and
eastern sources, meaning chiefly the Dadu Panthi and Sikh collections
in Rajasthan and Punjab, and the Bījak in the Uttar Pradesh(U.P.)-Bihar
region (Hess 1987b; Hawley 2005, 279–304). Shukdev Singh, my collabo-
rator in translating the Bījak in the late 1970s, published a critical edition
of the Bījak in 1972, based on manuscripts representing different Kabir
Panth lineages. The great obstacle to including the Bījak in the search for
an early “core” is that the earliest dated manuscript of the Bījak that he
was able to find was written in 1805. I am not aware of any earlier Bījak
manuscript that has turned up in the four decades since Singh’s edition.
This does not absolutely prove that the Bījak is a very late arrival in the
Kabir tradition, but it is a huge problem for those (including myself) who
would like to take it seriously. Of the editors listed above, Vaudeville and
Tiwari include the Bījak in one of the textual clusters that they reckon
with. It is omitted from the set of manuscripts on which Callewaert bases
his “early core,” because there is no dated copy within his cutoff date of
1681. He does, however, indicate which pads in that early core also occur
in the Bījak.
There is more to this problem than my personal attachment to the Bījak
(which was the basis of my doctoral work and first book), or the strong
122 Bodies of Song
claims of the Kabir Panth that their revered text must be taken seriously.
The big problem I see today is that the whole of eastern India is left out
when we deal only with early dated manuscripts. Kabir lived in the east-
ern part of the Hindi region.13 From present U.P. through Bihar, is there
really no verifiable written trace of Kabir earlier than 1800? Why do we
have so much material between the 1570s and 1680s from Rajasthan and
Punjab, far to the West, and nothing at all from the East, Kabir’s own area?
We know that the appropriate sectarian organizations, the nirguṇ panths,
were present in the West, primed and ready to collect poetry favored by
their gurus. The Dadu Panth and Sikh Panth did this work in the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth centuries. Were there no comparable nirguṇ
panths in the East? Are there historical reasons why eastern sects did
not compile vernacular collections, or why libraries or other institutions
might have been unstable or destroyed in the East? Callewaert and Lath
(1989, 82) mention the wealth of manuscripts in Rajasthan: “Rajasthan
is a treasure-house for manuscript hunters. There have not been too
many floods, rulers were patrons of art and literature and several panths
protected their manuscripts jealously. Was that an imitation of the Jain
bhaṇḍārs or the result of a sect’s nirguṇ devotion to the book?” Further
historical research is needed.14
None of the critical editors claims to be presenting the original utter-
ances that came out of Kabir’s mouth. They propose to take us closer to
the “core,” to show which poems are attested in multiple sources, to elimi-
nate works that belong to manifestly later layers.15 Callewaert limits his
final sources to manuscripts dated 1582–1681, puts them into four groups
that he considers relevant for revealing the early provenance of Kabir, and
works out a system of one, two, or three stars for a core body of poems,
based on how many of these groups of manuscripts a poem appears in.
The more stars a poem has, the closer to the center of the corpus he pro-
poses to place it. His edition emanates from a hot core of 48 three-star
poems to cooler circles of two-star, one-star, and no-star members of the
overall selection of 593 poems.16
In 1961, Tiwari devised eleven groups of diversely sourced materials
and created systems for prioritizing texts based on how many groups they
appeared in. Vaudeville’s Kabīr-Vāṇī (1982) reproduces and comments on
Tiwari’s edition. As Callewaert points out, Tiwari mixes dated manuscripts
with uncritically edited late print collections, which seriously undermines
the value of his edition. Callewaert maintains an early cut-off date for his
manuscript sources, has fewer groups, uses computerized methods to
analyze their contents, and publishes all the versions, with variants, of
the 593 poems that make the cut. He limits his claims about authenticity:
I argue that with certainty we can only say that the version of Kabir’s
songs found in the 17th century manuscripts is the version com-
monly used by singers then. And secondly, the songs which occur
in most repertoires, in different regions, have a better chance of
having been composed by Kabir. (Callewaert 2000, 2)
He also suggests that the very earliest manuscripts (ca. 1580) give us
a glimpse of the songs “that may have been popular in the repertoires
around 1550” (ibid.).
Callewaert’s method of “catching” early compositions is excellent; yet
there are gaps in the net. We must keep in mind the long interval between
Kabir’s death and the major early manuscripts. Even the earliest large writ-
ten collection of Kabir—found in the Goindval pothis that were compiled
in the 1570s in Punjab, close drafts for the 1604 Ādi Granth, sacred book
of the Sikhs—was assembled more than fifty years after Kabir’s death,
if we accept the conventional 1518 as his latest possible death date. The
gap increases to 170 years if we go with the 1448 death date proposed by
some scholars. In chapter 2, we got a ground-level view of how singers
and other transmitters change the texts they get, even from day to day. If,
with Callewaert, we extend the category of “early manuscripts” to 1681, the
temporal effects of orality multiply tremendously.
But the variables are not just temporal; they are also spatial, social,
and ideological. When poems show up thousands of kilometers away
from Kabir’s home, in different cultural, linguistic, religious, and politi-
cal environments, the kinds of changes they go through are affected by
much more than the passage of time. In “Kabir in His Oldest Dated
Manuscript,” J. S. Hawley describes the Fatehpur manuscript. Preserved
in royal Rajasthani libraries and clearly dated 1582, this text contains
345 poems, the vast majority devoted to Krishna. Scattered among these
are fifteen poems attributed to Kabir. Hawley comments: “Who is this
Kabir, as reflected in the Fatehpur manuscript? Given the work’s general
orientation, it will come as little surprise that he feels a good bit more
Vaishnava than some other Kabirs we know and love” (Hawley 2005,
283). Hawley then lists the Vaishnav names for God that abound in the
poems bearing Kabir’s name. Along with this presence, he observes
absences:
124 Bodies of Song
[T]‌here is an almost complete absence of Islamic or otherwise Urdu

or Persian vocabulary in the language of the Fatehpuri Kabir. . . .
[Kabir] is not . . . the common enemy of Hindus and Muslims (or
rather Turks), as we might expect on the basis of some of the best
known utterances attributed to him, since he makes no reference
to either group in the Fatehpur poems. We simply do not meet any
qāzis here, even as the butt of criticism, and when he does on one
occasion summon a pundit to the bar (12.3), calling him “brother”
(12.2), the man’s identity as a Hindu seems not to be at issue. Not
once in these poems do we find the celebrated face-off that animates
a number of famous Kabir compositions, with Hindus and Muslims
arrayed on opposite sides of the caesura only to join common cause
as Rām-Rahīm or Allah-Rām before the poem ends—or to be dis-
missed equally with a stroke of Kabir’s sharp tongue. This Hindu/
Muslim program is one of the aspects of Kabir that Nabhadas most
celebrates in his description of Kabir, probably written sometime
between 1600 and 1625, so its absence in the Fatehpur collection is
striking. Here we simply do not find the Kabir who talked of yogis,
mahants, and śāktas; of miyāṅs, sultāns, and mullāhs. The whole
fabulous street-scene panoply of Banaras is absent, and if Kabir was
a weaver, a julāhā, you would never know it from the Fatehpur col-
lection. (Hawley 2005, 285–86)
The religious and courtly environments in which these written texts

appear significantly shape their content, weighing against the mere power
of the early date to persuade us that they “have a better chance of having
been composed by Kabir.”17
Purushottam Agrawal’s books and articles (most in Hindi, some
in English) since 2000 have made him the leading scholar of Kabir in
any language. I admire Agrawal’s work and have found him an invalu-
able conversation partner, provocateur, and friend. In this chapter, I differ
with some of his conclusions while always appreciating his sharp argu-
ments and original insights. My discussion of Agrawal’s views on texts
and discourses of authenticity is based on chapter 4 of his landmark book
Akath kahānī prem kī: kabīr kī kavitā aur unkā samay/The Untellable Story
of Love: Kabir’s Poetry and Times (2009a). His commentary on Winand
Callewaert’s work is on 204–13 of that chapter.
Agrawal is very critical of Callewaert, focusing more on what he per-
ceives as a misguided and haughty attitude than on the ultimate results
of Callewaert’s careful winnowing of the texts. He perceives a certain

neocolonial arrogance, even hints of racism, in Callewaert’s assertions of
scholarly “rigor.” Agrawal’s critique raises issues to which all of us should
pay attention. But on the question of Callewaert’s editing methods (not
to mention the implication of racism), the critique is far too harsh. Why
aren’t previous textual scholars who tried to sift through manuscript col-
lections subjected to similar criticism? Why not also dismiss Hawley’s
work on the growth of the Sūrsāgar (Hawley 2005), Byrant and Hawley’s
momumental work Sur’s Ocean: Poems from the Early Tradition, and other
critical editing projects with which Agrawal is familiar?18
The particular critique of Callewaert seems to have been touched
off by his brief suggestion of Brahminical bias on the part of the great
progenitor of Kabir studies in Hindi, H. P. Dvivedi: “Kabir very soon
was ‘appropriated’ by interested parties (from the Gorakhnathis and
the Ramanandis in the 17th century to the Brahmins like Hazariprasad
Dvivedi or other social groups in the 20th century) for their own ideo-
logical purpose or benefit” (Callewaert 2000, 2). Later Callewaert says
of Dvivedi’s introduction, “I cannot help calling [it] a Brahminical
appropriation of Kabir” (ibid., 15). These statements lead Agrawal into
an intriguing tangent on colonial Indology, the history of Christianity,
institutionalized religion, and the politics of scholarship in Indian “ver-
nacular modernity” (a key term in his theory of modern cultural his-
tory in India). The critique of Callewaert’s editing is intertwined with
these larger arguments, as Agrawal detects the scent of colonial pre-
sumption and misinformation in the work. He associates Callewaert’s
“star system” with the European and Christian histories of imperiously
controlling texts and narratives—whether through narrow text-editing
projects; ruthless elimination of competing narratives (as in the editing
of the Bible); or constructions by colonial rulers of the colony’s history
and culture. Elsewhere Agrawal has written forcefully about intellectual
identity politics, presenting searing critiques of Dharamvir and others
who make caste identity the key to who can speak of Kabir and how
readers should judge what is said (Agrawal 2001). Callewaert’s sugges-
tion that Dvivedi is biased because he is a Brahmin calls forth the same
critique from Agrawal. While “identity politics” in scholarship is an
important topic, I do not intend to take up that discussion here, apart
from saying that the accusations against Callewaert are, in my view,
excessive. My interest here is in narrower questions about the validity
of Callewaert’s method of editing the texts.
126 Bodies of Song
Unfriendly to the “star system,” Agrawal has a very different way of eval-
uating the manuscript sources. Agreeing in principle that it is important
to differentiate some early source(s) from the huge accretions of “Kabir”
that have built up over centuries, he makes a strong case for accepting
the Granthāvalī of Shyamsundar Das—published in 1928 and based on a
single Rajasthani manuscript written by followers of the nirguṇ guru Dadu
in about 1620—as the best representative of the oldest manuscript layers.
He points out that of the 403 poems in Das’s Granthāvalī, 396 are present
among Callewaert’s collection of 593. Along with this overlap, he explains
that the Granthāvalī offers a rich range of themes associated with Kabir,
with no overemphasis on certain themes at the expense of others, and
no censorship of verses even if they run counter to Dadu Panthi views.19
Convinced that the Granthāvalī is relatively free of sectarian bias, Agrawal
goes so far as to describe Dadu Panthi compilers as objective and scien-
tific. He discusses a range of attitudes that might have influenced manu-
script editors as they chose texts from oral sources to commit to writing:
Some manuscript-makers drew ideological boundaries around

their collections, while others, not concerned with such boundaries,
based their collections on scientific, objective models. Because of its
objectivity and scientific approach, the Granthāvalī is the most cred-
ible source of Kabir compositions. . . . Unlike the compilers of the
[Dadu Panthi] Panchvāṇī and Sārvangī, those of the Ādi Granth and
Bījak had their own ideological purposes and editorial methods. . . .
The Ādi Granth does not include all the poets and compositions that
were available at that time, but only those that would promote Sikh
ideas. The same applies to the compositions in the Bījak. (Agrawal
2009a, 217–18)
He elaborates on why the Granthāvalī seems objective:
The Granthāvalī grasps the personality of Kabir in a persuasive fash-

ion. It gives a balanced view of the Kabir who flashes forth in the
oral tradition’s poems and legends. Most importantly, we find abso-
lutely no attempt in the Granthāvalī’s Kabir to raise up a singular
image of Kabir. This is not a robotic or computer-produced Kabir,
but rather a human being with rich, multi-leveled sensibilities.
Rather than finding mechanical consistency, we recognize a Kabir
with internal struggles and debates. There are poems that criticize
hypocrisy and oppose the ideology of varṇāshram [Brahminical
doctrines on caste and life-stages]. There are poems soaked in the

juice of love, poems in the voice and form of a woman, and poems
insulting women. There are poems of yogic symbolism, poems
in ulaṭbāṃsī [“upside-down language,” a riddling and paradoxical
style], and poems tinged by Vaishnav symbols, stories and beliefs.
It is certainly not the case that the Granthāvalī lacks social criti-
cism, but it is also not the case that it is filled only with such “harsh
words.”20 (ibid., 215)
The unique importance of the Dadupanthi sources, i.e. the
Granthāvalī tradition, is that they have preserved Kabir’s vāṇī with-
out any ideological censorship. The Panth was Dadu’s, but Dadu
himself had boundless respect and gratitude toward Kabir, and
thus it was necessary to collect his vāṇī with the utmost care. At the
time of compilation, Kabir’s vāṇī was not passed through the sieve
of Dadu Panthi beliefs, and thus the particularity of his voice was
preserved. The Granthāvalī’s Kabir is not some cut-and-pared-down
Kabir; it is the complete Kabir. (ibid., 219)
I question Agrawal’s assumptions about Dadu and his manuscript

compilers. How is it possible to know the quality of Dadu’s respect and
gratitude to Kabir, and therefore his care in collecting Kabir vāṇī? Why
not make the same claim about the Sikh gurus?21 For comparison, I cite
statements in the bibliographical notes of P. D. Barthwal’s 1936 work,
The Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry. At one point he affirms that the Kabir
Granthāvalī edited by Shyamsundar Das “is singularly free from all sectar-
ian affectation which is usually found in the works officially authorized by
sects” (Barthwal 1936, 274). But soon afterward he makes a similar state-
ment about the Ādi Granth: “Though Sikhism is at present as much a sect
as any, yet the Granth is absolutely free from sectarianism” (ibid., 282). In
between, he seems to backtrack on his claim of nonsectarianism in the
Dadu Panth, suggesting that the compilers of the Dadu Panth’s “Panch
bani . . . have shown no love for Nanak’s banis though the latter was earlier
in time than Dadu” (ibid., 278).
Agrawal’s main argument for the Granthāvalī’s freedom from sectar-
ian bias is that it embraces all possible themes and styles, even those
that contrast dramatically with each other. I question whether this is
automatically evidence of the true Kabir. One might argue the oppo-
site: if Kabir did have a distinct personality and particular views, he
might not be best represented by works that include a tremendous
diversity of viewpoints. The claim that Das’s Granthāvalī lacks sectarian
128 Bodies of Song
bias is further undermined by the presence of verses like these: “Kabir,

blessed is that woman who has given birth to a Vaiṣṇava son”; and “Keep
away from the Śākta, though he be a Brāhmaṇ,/ associate with Vaiṣṇava,
though he be a Caṇḍāl./ Meet him with open arms,/ As if you had found
Gopal” (Vaudeville 1974, 186, and S.Das 1970, 41).
I can agree, finally, that the Granthāvalī is a very good crystallization of
the earliest sources, maybe even the best single collection, as Purushottam
Agrawal argues. But I can’t accept the argument that it stands apart from
all other sectarian collections in its objectivity. To appreciate and evaluate
the early written collections of Kabir, we should look equally at all of them,
assessing their different sectarian or courtly origins, their geographical
locations, constituencies, content, and language—along with their dates.
In this effort, the work that Callewaert has done is very valuable. It comes
up with a “core” that is quite close to the Granthāvalī—thus supporting
the latter’s particular value. But it also offers much more information that
we can work with in various ways.22 It offers persuasive grounds for the
value of the Granthāvalī, not simply the assertion that it is more objective
or more comprehensive in its styles and subject matters.
To conclude this section on the manuscript mindset, I reiterate that
Callewaert does not claim to have found the authentic Kabir or to have pro-
duced the definitive critical edition. He simply argues two points: first, “the
version of Kabir’s songs found in the 17th century manuscripts is the version
commonly used by singers then.” This is uncontroversial, but we should say
“there” as well as “then.” These versions were commonly sung by singers
at that time and in those places where the collections were made. His second
claim cuts closer to the bone of the authenticity discourse: “the songs which
occur in most repertoires, in different regions, have a better chance of having
been composed by Kabir” (Callewaert 2000, 2). This conclusion is intuitively
attractive, yet the gaps in the net—particularly the absence of manuscripts
from the East, the lapse of time between Kabir’s death and the earliest written
records, and the long distance between Kabir’s home and those early manu-
scripts from Rajasthan and Punjab—must make it very tentative.23
Reading and Listening: The World

of Oral-Written Intertextuality
Unlike previous scholars of Kabir, Purushottam Agrawal pays attention
to the difference between oral and written traditions and thinks seriously
about the former. From the beginning to the present, he points out, oral
and written sources have been “face to face” in the development of Kabir.
While respectful of manuscript researchers, he states emphatically that
the presence of texts in manuscripts cannot be our only model. In this con-
nection he quotes a story told by the Pakistani qawwālī singer Farid Ayaz,
published by Shabnam Virmani’s Kabir Project:
Shamsher used to ply a donkey cart to earn a living. He knew so

much poetry of Kabir. Once I heard him down the lane—playing
a small dholak [drum] . . . singing Kabir. 10–15 people gathered
around him and the singing went on through the night. I was just
10–11 years old then. When I heard him sing, tears began to flow
from my eyes. That was when a love of Kabir arose in my heart. And
I began to listen, understand, fill Kabir inside myself . . . from such a
man, whom the world considers a donkey-cart man! Kabir’s knowl-
edge you will not get from universities, scholars and professors. For
that you will have to go near Kabir himself. You’ll have to break free
of all your shackles and go!24
Just as the written traditions have preserved Kabir over centuries, so have
the oral. One of Agrawal’s major contributions in Akath kahānī prem kī is
a theory of modernity that differentiates between Europe-derived “colonial
modernity” and Indian “vernacular modernity,” tracing their developments
and interactions from the early modern period to the present. In the matter
of textual histories, he asserts that colonial modernity has bequeathed its
obsession with “authentic and consistent” written sources and its ignorant
disregard of orality, while vernacular modernity understands and appreci-
ates both. An extensive quotation from Agrawal is worthwhile here:
In any nation or society, especially in one where so much importance

is given to shruti [“what is heard,” referring generally to oral-aural
sacred lore and specifically to the Vedas], where people have hesi-
tated to put the words of their gurus into writing, it is not a sign
of intelligence to worship written sources and hold oral sources in
contempt. (Agrawal 2009a, 213)
In vernacular modernity and the public sphere of bhakti, and
among those of our contemporaries who remain connected with the
public sphere of bhakti, the poetry of Kabir is like a living, breath-
ing body. In public insight, memory and imagination, it is a vibrant
presence. (ibid., 223)
130 Bodies of Song
Seized by its obsession with written works, shaped by the

methods that the church developed to “fix” authorship, European
modernity—which spread across the world through imperialism—
has desired to turn Kabir’s compositions into “the book.” The book
in that very sense in which Kabir questioned, “What book are you
talking about? What Veda and Purana are you listening to?”
Assessing Kabir texts is undoubtedly an important task, but
we can only speak of authenticity when we consider other con-
texts along with that of text assessment. The colonial modernity
imported from Europe, its mixture with vernacular modernity,
and the difference between their methods—we must be aware of
all this. We should resist the temptation to turn poetry into “the
book.” Along with “kāgaj” we need to make space for “magaj” [col-
loquial terms, lit. “paper” and “brain,” referring roughly to written
and oral]. Only then will we be able to give good answers to good
questions. Which compositions are respected as Kabir’s by vernac-
ular modernity, and on what grounds? We must also pay attention
to the methods of the Dadu Panthis, Kabir Panthis, and the compil-
ers of the Ādi Granth. What are the similarities and differences in
their priorities?
When we do this, it will not be necessary for “modern” Kabir
scholars to cut out the songs that are not found in manuscripts,
but that are universally admired by Kabir’s community—profound
songs like Moko kahāṇ ḍhūnḍhe re bande, Jhīnī chadariyā, Santo sahaj
samādhi bhalī, and Jag se nātā chhūtal ho. Those that we can’t find
in manuscripts but that have passed the “rigorous” test of popular
acceptance as Kabir vāṇī—rather than rejecting them, it would be
better to regard them as Kabir’s uparachnā [extended corpus].25 And
who knows? Perhaps tomorrow, some of these compositions may
be found in a written source, an old manuscript. In some textual
scholar’s star system, they might end up getting three stars, or two,
or at least one. (ibid., 224–25)
In one pithy statement, Agrawal cautions us about the folly of ignoring

oral traditions:
Along with rigor, it would be wise to apply some nuance and sensi-
tivity. Along with the panditry of manuscripts, it would be wise to
weigh in the balance Kabir’s saying: “As many as leaves in the forest
or sand grains in the Ganga / are the words from Kabir’s mouth. /
Poor pandit! What can he do?” (ibid., 216)
The mention of “rigor,” like the earlier reference to a “robotic,

computer-produced Kabir,” seems to be another poke at Callewaert. But
Kabir’s Poor pandit! inevitably means Poor Linda! and Poor Purushottam!
too. We agree on the value of oral traditions. But how are we going to
combine rigor, nuance, and sensitivity, bringing old attested manuscripts
into sustained conversation with free-flowing song? This task does not fall
within the scope of Agrawal’s book, but my project compels me to pursue
it further.
Singers, Folklorists, and Other Listeners

Singers, song-lovers, Kabir devotees, and (some) folklorists—do these
constitute a category? They do insofar as we are free to construct any cat-
egories we like, based on our observation of common properties.26 What
these terms have in common for me is that they sketch a set of participants
whose engagement begins with practice and experience, people and per-
formance, emotion and imagination, poetry and music, rather than with
history, documentation, and fact. This reminds me of a famous statement
by Keats that has lodged deep within me since high school:
[A]‌
t once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of
Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare pos-
sessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a
man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without
any irritable reaching after fact and reason.27
The people cited in this section appeal to feeling, intuition, and experi-
ence. They propose ideas that may seem imprecise but that may also open
doors for us.
One day Shabnam was talking with Narayanji, a Kabir singer, and
Dinesh Sharma of the NGO Eklavya (see chapter 6). Dinesh said someone
should do a study on authenticity. “Between praise of the guru and politi-
cal statements and everything else, we need a way to distinguish authentic
(prāmāṇik) from false verses.” Narayanji interrupted:
132 Bodies of Song
You won’t get anywhere that way. The proof [pramāṇ] will come
when you yourself live it out in your life. Try to find out for yourself,
and you’ll see what’s authentic. The scale is in your own hands.
You yourself have to weigh things and decide. Others can’t do it
for you.28
The appeal to experience arises again and again, once we leave the
world of critical editors and historians. When Shabnam was interviewed
by oral historian Indira Choudhary, she recalled a meeting with the leg-
endary folklorist of Rajasthan, Komal Kothari:
We spent two or three days chatting with him. I remember at one

point he got a little impatient, a little irritated with me asking ques-
tions like, “What is the meaning of this song?” He said, “There is
no one meaning of this song. Please understand that. This song is
lying in wait.” . . . The spirit of what he said was that this couplet,
song or folktale lies in wait for that moment in your life when some
very personal experience of yours will come to inhabit that poem, and
the meaning of that song will open up to you. You don’t then need
to ask anybody what the meaning of the song is—it means what it
means to you. . . . That’s so beautiful. To me, they keep opening up.
A song I thought I understood three years ago—today suddenly I’ll
be singing it, and I’ll say, “Oh my god.” This is what Kapil Tiwari
says in his interview: if you’ve really experienced something, not just
read it as information in a book, then, “Bahut baatein hongi kabir ke
saath.—Kabir will constantly be in dialogue with you.” This poetry
will be in dialogue with you, because every day new gems will reveal
themselves in it.29
Later in a conversation with me, Shabnam enlarged on this point:
You reach a moment in your life when something opens up to

you. I’ll hear something over and over and it leaves me cold. Then
suddenly at a particular moment, it will open up. That just hap-
pened with the sākhī “guru govind . . .” [Guru and God are before
me. / Whose feet should I touch? / I offer myself to the guru / who
showed me God]. I have always thought it was so tiresome. But just
now, I actually experienced Kapil Tiwari as a guru, opening the truth
to me, within me. And I am indebted. My debt is beyond measure.
The sākhī opened to me as I opened to it. There is no single objec-

tive meaning. You have to inhabit it with your life experience. Then
it becomes yours. Everyone has his or her own prāmāṇik [authentic]
Kabir. This is what Narayanji was saying.30
Kapil Tiwari, director of Madhya Pradesh’s Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad

(Institute for Folk and Tribal Arts, abbreviated henceforth as ALKP) in
Bhopal for many years,31 is devoted to folk cultures: studying, appreciat-
ing, supporting, and bringing to public attention this immeasurable and
often neglected cultural wealth. He has presided over many projects, rang-
ing across literature, music, visual arts, and theater, producing works that
include publications, exhibitions, and performances. It happens that he
also has a deep personal connection to Kabir, having spent a formative
period in childhood living with an uncle in a Kabir Panth ashram. One
of his long-term projects has been on the living oral traditions of the sant
poets, among whom Kabir is preeminent. For more than a decade he
directed a team of researchers who were collecting song texts from ten
regional dialects (bolīs) that span much of northern and central India. In
2007 ALKP published a set of essays by scholars in each region, highlight-
ing the contents and characteristics of Kabir in their area. They have also
planned a collection of about 1,750 song-poems in their original dialects,
with Hindi gloss and commentary. In a series of video interviews with
Shabnam Virmani in 2004, Tiwari eloquently expounds on oral traditions.
The citations that follow are based on those interviews (translated from
Hindi by Shabnam Virmani and me).32
Tiwari emphasizes the fundamental connection of oral traditions with
knowledge grounded in experience.
In the traditions of bhakti, yoga, tantra, for anyone who is doing

practical sādhanā [spiritual discipline], knowledge is experience,
not hearsay. The latter is mere information. You can’t under-
stand Kabir through information. You must go into experiential
knowledge. One who has this experience will have a relation-
ship with Kabir. Kabir will talk endlessly with such a person.
When you have an experience that transforms your vision, in
your soul, your heart—the emotional world of the heart, which
is an immense ocean—you will easily understand the essence of
Kabir. And then even your dead scriptures will get some cred-
ibility and substance.
134 Bodies of Song
When asked why he was pouring so much effort into putting the con-
tents of oral traditions into books, he replied:
I’ve had to, because the whole oral tradition is in danger. We have
shifted everything from śhabda [spoken word] to akṣhar [written
word]. There are huge campaigns to make people literate. These
people believe that there is an inseparable link between civilization
and literacy. Only when something is brought into writing does it
become civilized. How am I supposed to believe that Tijan-bāī, who
can’t even write her own name, let alone read Sanskrit, is not civi-
lized?33 An entire cultural tradition is alive inside her. It has nothing
to do with whether she can sign her name. I know so many edu-
cated people. Culturally most of them are totally illiterate! Cultural
illiteracy, this is a huge problem today. The government should
do something about that. But it’s doing the opposite. Those who
already have deep knowledge of śhabda, they must learn to read, as
though that is the only yardstick of civilization and development.
Meanwhile those urban illiterates whose ignorance of culture, art,
life, and experience keeps increasing—they don’t do anything about
that. They don’t even consider it worth worrying about. . . .
Take an example from my life—I got a doctorate in literature,
but we never read the Mahābhārata. One of the greatest epics of the
world, and I read it only after finishing my doctoral studies. I don’t
have faith in written traditions. I am forced to do this work [of col-
lecting and printing oral repertoires]. Our entire country has sworn
an oath of loyalty to development and progress. They must have lit-
eracy campaigns. I am afraid for the oral tradition. I want to save it.
Tiwari shares his personal commitment to experiential knowledge:
Many years ago I decided to let go of what I had learnt or read from oth-
ers. I was determined to know life directly, and to know myself. I realized
that experience is knowledge. All the rest is information. For instance, a
“hot coal”—these are words we can read, but we won’t know the burn-
ing. When we feel the hot coal on our palm, we know what fire is.34
In the domain where we reach (often irritably, to use Keats’s word)

after fact and reason, older Hindi forms and word choices strengthen
a text’s claim to authenticity, even as modern diction and usage do the
opposite. An obvious criterion for declaring a poem inauthentic is anach-

ronism: it may contain modern objects that didn’t exist in Kabir’s time,
or it may show Kabir interacting with someone who lived long before or
after him. The example of the train was given earlier. Here is another:
The seeker aims

at the target, shoots. Hit
by the sky! Hit
by the guru’s wisdom! Hit
by the true name!
Up-breath, down-breath. A rifle-shot

to the three-stream confluence.
Light the fuse of love, let the bullet
of wisdom strike.
Take the sword of the elements,

the knife of mind,
the shield of the Word. Let the bullet
of wisdom strike.
In the fort of the body, armies gather.

Two soldiers clash.
The brave warrior stands his ground,
the coward runs away.35
The language of rifle and bullet is modern. But the trope of being struck
and wounded (chot lagnā, śhabda kī choṭ) by a weapon that is the guru’s
wisdom, the word, the name, or the bhajan, has been well established
in the mainstream of Kabir poetry for centuries. Many poems speak of
a bow and arrow or a spear; here the weapon has been modernized to
rifle and bullet. The yogic terminology of breath, energy channels, and
the confluence between the eyebrows, central to all the old Kabir tradi-
tions, is still here, as is the traditional figure of the body as a city or a
fort. Should the whole song be rejected because of the rifle and bullet?
Kapil Tiwari’s views on authenticity in Kabir are bound up with his
understanding of oral tradition and experience-based knowledge. Here is
what he says about anachronism:
Kapil Tiwari (KT): The question that interests me is not so much the
authenticity of the texts as the truth of that Kabir who is spread far
136 Bodies of Song
and wide among the people. What dwells in people’s hearts and
souls? For me, if any authenticity is possible, it is here—in people’s
memory and behavior, in their songs and music, where the tradi-
tion has continued unbroken. As for written traditions—the earliest
anthology is the Guru Granth Sāhib in Punjab, the Nagari Pracharini
Sabha in Varanasi has brought out a critical edition, research on
the Bījak has gone on. But for me there is a greater authenticity
in the Kabir of people’s living memory than in the critically edited
literature. . . .
Shabnam Virmani (SV): In collecting these song texts you must have come
across many things that obviously didn’t belong to the fifteenth cen-
tury. Will you include those too?
KT: Yes, I will include those. When I say that this is a living folk tradi-
tion, it means that it is not a thing that’s frozen in the past. So it
will contain many objects and words that arise from today’s reality.
For example, when Tijan-bāī sings pandvāṇī, airplanes appear. There
were no airplanes in the Mahābhārata, but she has put its characters
into airplanes. The power of improvisation makes the Mahābhārata
meaningful in the twenty-first century. So when folk singers sing
Kabir’s nirguṇ songs, many things can enter that didn’t exist in
Kabir’s time. The singer is a person of our time expressing Kabir’s
truth, not his literal words. For the singer who seizes Kabir’s truth, it
makes no difference if the text has a train, a photo, an airplane, a rifle.
What’s the difference? The truth in which the singer has faith should
be present there.
Tiwari asserts that “Kabir’s truth” is something deeper than

period-appropriate diction, deeper than book-based knowledge, deeper
than musical proficiency. He claims that sincere, faith-filled rural singers
are likely to know and express it more than educated readers of poetry
and philosophy, or sophisticated classical musicians. Is he willing to say
what Kabir’s essential truth is? Yes. He suggests that the heart of Kabir’s
truth is shūnya—emptiness or boundlessness—an experience in which
identity, anxiety, and grasping are gone, past and future are gone, and
the innermost spirit (ātmā) knows a stillness that fills and erases time.
This experience is the outcome of sādhanā (practice/spiritual discipline)
and faith. It will not come when we are involved in complicated thinking.
It is associated with a person who is simple, sahaj—a key term in Kabir,
and a quality that is unambiguously good in North Indian parlance. The
core meaning of shūnya may be present not only in those poems that
directly use the term, but also in others that deal with various aspects of
life and death.
KT: The words that Kabir sang have been preserved for us, the tradition has
saved them—a tradition that didn’t know how to write but knew how
to remember. Kabir’s truth was so big that for six centuries, people in
this country have remembered it, they can’t forget it. They eat, drink
and sleep with it. . . . The person who knows this life can sing Kabir.
I’m telling you, singing Kabir is not a matter of musical skill. Very
great music masters, great singers—I’m not disrespecting them, but
if their singing is not based on knowing and having faith in Kabir’s
life, if they don’t know the urgency of that search, then they just have a
kind of musical grammar. With only that kind of power, you can’t sing
Kabir. Kabir’s truth will not come forth. But a folk singer might really
live Kabir on some level.
SV: Don’t you think you are romanticizing the folk singers to some extent?
KT: I don’t think so.
SV: I could argue that many bhajan mandalīs sing these songs in a habit-
ual way without understanding them, without attending to the inner
meaning of the words.
KT: The people we think of as illiterate, India’s rural people who are
not in the tradition of written words—you will be surprised to dis-
cover how they understand the principles of Indian truths without
the help of written texts. I am not ready to grant that those who sing
Kabir do not know Kabir’s truth. To know is an experience! How is
it possible that a sincere and simple Malwi villager like Prahladji,
without having studied grammar or classical philosophy, can know
Kabir’s truth? How is this possible? I would also say that those who
are initiated in a popular tradition of spiritual practice and have a
deep faith in that truth, they get strength, a power in their singing,
not just skill. As long as that truth is not active, skill in singing can’t
do much. I’m telling you that someone who knows the philosophy of
our classical music tradition cannot sing Kabir’s truth, the truth of
shūnya. They can sing, but you won’t see the fire, the heat, the energy
of that truth.
Tiwari then discusses the great classical singer Kumar Gandharva
(1924–92), who lived in Malwa and was known for his uncannily powerful
singing of Kabir and other nirguṇ poets. He says that Kumarji’s ability to
138 Bodies of Song
sing Kabir in such a profound way was based on his going out among folk
singers and learning from them. Kumarji’s actions and statements sup-
port this view. He regularly went to sit with the Nath Panthis at the dhūnī
(fire) associated with one of the great yogis who used to live in Dewas. He
listened and learned from them, as from wandering singers who passed
by his house. In Kumarji’s words:
The way of singing nirguṇī bhajans—it is something unique.

Especially those people who belong to the Nath sect, who have very
little to do with settled habitations—their world is completely dif-
ferent. Their life is different, their ways are different. . . . The ones
who really have faith in this kind of life—the voice that comes out
of them—that’s what I try to practice. One day I was sitting on the
veranda of the bungalow where I used to live. A man came to beg. He
was singing Suntā hai guru gyānī . . . . It’s not that he was singing very
well. But I thought: this is the nirguṇī voice; I should definitely prac-
tice this. The next day I composed Suntā hai guru gyānī. The quality
of creating emptiness [shūnya] in nirguṇ is amazing. It comes from
that carefree, nonattached state. . . . In nirguṇ, this way of expressing,
of throwing the voice, is a natural part of their lives. Without hav-
ing that kind of nature, you can’t put forth that kind of voice. Their
voice matches their mind. Maiṅ jagūṅ mhārā satguru jāge, ālam sārā
sovai . . . “I am awake, my true guru is awake, the whole universe is
sleeping”—that is their world. When they sing, at that moment, who
is there? No one is there. The svaras that come out there are not the
svaras that come out in the drawing room, are they? Nirguṇ should
convey a sense of solitude. (Hess 2009a, 30–31)36
Madhup Mudgal, a disciple of Kumar Gandharva, corroborates Tiwari’s

understanding that rural singers and devotees, unsophisticated in urban
terms but possessing faith and a certain kind of life experience, sing Kabir
with a power that classical musicians like himself can envy. In Shabnam
Virmani’s film Koi Sunta Hai/Someone Is Listening, he describes the Nath
Panthis singing a beautiful, haunting Kabir bhajan as they dance in a pro-
cession to the place of Kumarji’s cremation:
When Kumarji passed away, those folk groups came. They sang
that song, “I’m a bird from another country.” It’s very difficult to
express—I’ve never heard singing like that. . . . The mandalīs came
to the cremation and sang “I’m a bird from another country,” play-
ing their small hand-cymbals. I don’t know what it was. The atmo-
sphere. It was dusk. There was a certain light. I can’t explain it. It
was too much. My hair stood on end. It was wonderful, even while
we were filled with sorrow. [Now Madhupji sings a stanza of “I’m a
bird from another country” with a look of deep concentration.] Then
they would sing like this. [He hums a wordless bridge.] With cym-
bals. That made a deep impact on me. We can’t sing like that. We
won’t get that feeling. For them it’s pure devotion (bhakti). I wish
our bhakti could be like that. But we have to watch out for the sing-
ing too. They are 100% immersed (līn). That’s the way it should be.
(Virmani 2008c)
Kapil Tiwari continues his discussion of Kumar Gandharva:
Kumarji reinvented Kabir for himself by going into the oral tra-
ditions. He searched for Kabir in places that were far beyond
reading. To know Kabir through reading and to know the Kabir
created by and dwelling in the lives of people—these are two very
different things. In Malwa, Kabir is created by and dwells within
life. That is why the soil can give birth to a singer like Tipanyaji.
Folk artists like that are not just born out of the blue. You need
that ground, those values, the fragrance of that spiritual practice.
Then you can sing! Kumarji left classical behind and searched for
this Kabir of the soil, rediscovered him in his own spirit. Finding
that experience is a very difficult thing to do. Kabir touches your
innermost spirit. Then the music that comes out is something
else. Then you flow with Kabir’s truth, not the technicalities of
music. Music comes after. The words (bāṇī) lead the music rather
than the music leading the words. That bāṇī is so great, it con-
tains such a big truth, it has such fire, that when it starts to walk,
music just follows it. It’s not that the music is in front and Kabir’s
bāṇī is following it.37
This view of authenticity claims a profound central truth that radiates

through and illuminates the poetry of the Kabir tradition, allowing us to
recognize the poems that appropriately go under Kabir’s name. For Tiwari,
this central truth is indicated by the word shūnya. It can be known by prac-
tice, sincerity, simplicity, faith, and life experience, and it can be expressed
140 Bodies of Song
in song by people who have these qualities. If a poem or song attached to

Kabir’s name expresses Kabir’s truth, it may be taken as authentic.38
Those who look for Kabir’s core texts in written collections and those
who listen for Kabir’s truth in oral milieus agree on this point: it is worth
searching for the “true words” of Kabir. There is a voice, recognizable by
content, language, and style, that belongs to Kabir. He is not interchange-
able with Dadu, Nanak, or Raidas (despite marked similarities). He is
distinct from Surdas, Mira, and Tulsidas (despite Vaishnav names and met-
aphors, and the ambiguous overlaps between nirguṇ and saguṇ). Textual
scholars, restricting the field to selected groups of manuscripts, seek objec-
tive evidence of what is at the “core” of the Kabir tradition. Those who seek
the “heart” of Kabir in oral tradition angle off in the direction of negative
capability. They move intuitively. They listen. They point out that Kabir is
constantly telling us to listen, to turn inward, to look in our own hearts for
the truth he is trying to convey. They can cite countless songs and sākhīs
that affirm this, including the one given at the beginning of this chapter.
Kapil Tiwari points to the term sākhī in the Kabir tradition. The general
public, including schools that put Kabir in the syllabus, use the term dohā
for those pithy couplets associated with the poet. Dohā is a technical term
for a meter with a two-line (or four half-line) format. But in Kabir circles,
sākhī (Sanskrit sākṣhī, eyewitness) is preferred.
People feel that when Kabir’s name comes in the signature line, he
speaks as a direct witness, he is testifying to his truth, it can’t be
false. Kabir is saying this. I didn’t get it from the scriptures, I didn’t
hear it from someone else, it doesn’t come from my studies of texts.
This was born inside of me. . . . Kabir cannot tell anybody else’s truth.
This is his secret. He isn’t saying it just to produce a poem. Kabir
was not literate. He didn’t read the Shastras, Vedas, Upanishads,
Agam, Nigam. He was not in the tradition of classical texts. He
found the truth through his own practice and through the grace
of his guru Ramanand. And he expressed this experience through
poetry. . . . Kabir says, listen brothers and seekers! . . . This is the seal
(mauhar) on his truth. . . . Sākhī means witness, one who sees.
How many times I have been teased as the pandit whose pretensions
Kabir was so adept at exposing! I will be introduced as the great scholar
from Stanford University, and then someone will quote lines that reduce
scholars to ash.
maiṇ kahatā ānkhoṇ kī dekhī, tū kahatī kāgaz kī lekhī

terā merā manavā ek kaise hoe re.
I say what I’ve seen with my own eyes,

you say what’s written on paper.
How can your mind and mine ever get together?
pothī paḍh paḍh jag muā, panḍit bhayā na koī

do ākhar prem kā, paḍhe so pandit hoī.
Reading books upon books, everyone died

and none became wise.
Four letters: love.
Read those and be wise.
My own most famous story, in the tiny circle of those who read books in
English about Kabir, is “Kuchh bajegā!” (Hess and Singh 2002, 35–37). In
that story a Kabir Panthi with a strange name nails me accurately as a
Kabir researcher who has no real comprehension of what she is doing.
Then he gives a riveting performance that conveys the difference between
book-knowledge and experience. Many years later, Shabnam reminds me
of another sākhī that touches on this matter:
Reading, reading, she turned to stone.

Writing, writing, she became a brick.
Kabir says, did she get any love?
Not a single drop!
No Authenticity, No Author
One can argue that it is futile to try to prove anything by early manu-
scripts: the variables are out of control. One can also argue against the idea
that Kabir has a particular, identifiable voice that can be recognized in oral
sources. As demonstrated in chapter 2, “Kabir” poems can be interchange-
able with Naths or Sufis, with Mira or Nanak or Tansen. Passages of verse
can freely migrate from one bhakti location to another. In casual reading,
I’ve found songs and couplets that for me belonged to Kabir popping up
among the Bauls of Bengal and the bhats of Rajasthan and claimed by
those traditions.39 Perhaps what we have is just a nebulous mass of lines,
phrases, formulas, metaphors, and messages, freely floating in some
142 Bodies of Song
bhakti-adhyātmik-poetic firmament and dropping to earth when certain

atmospheric conditions prevail.40
A third lens for viewing the phenomena associated with “Kabir” is that
of social and historical contingency. Here, one avoids the discourse of
authenticity. One examines the present and past through historical docu-
mentation and ethnography, studies the history of reception, and traces
patterns of language and theme across many sources and contexts.
Sources that show threads of reception include Mughal court docu-
ments; Sufi histories; bhakti anthologies, commentaries, and hagiogra-
phies; Kabir legends recorded in many places; and works produced by panths
and sampradāys. If we layer the written Kabir texts by date—manuscript
and print up to the present—we can do specific inquiries like the one
suggested by Bhuvan Komkali in the previous chapter: When is Urdu
language, or particular Persianate vocabulary, notable by its presence or
absence? We can also do such inquiries geographically, or with other crite-
ria, such as courtly or sectarian location. Work on this kind of history has
been done by many scholars cited here—Vaudeville, Hawley, Lorenzen,
Agrawal, Mukta, Martin, Pinch.
Younger scholars continue to do fine-grained historical work on
interpretations and reimaginings of Kabir. For instance, James Hare
has recently written on the Bhaktamāl of Nabhadas, a foundational text
of North Indian bhakti poets and traditions about which little has previ-
ously been available in English. Nabhadas’s short verse portrait of Kabir,
composed in the early 1600s, is very important as the earliest recorded
description of Kabir. It strongly emphasizes Kabir’s character as a pro-
tester against Brahminical norms (varṇāśhram dharma, six schools of phi-
losophy), Hindu and Muslim sectarianism, shallow and showy religious
practices; and also as a fearless humanitarian who didn’t try to please oth-
ers but stood for sincerity and depth of experience:
Kabir didn’t care about caste or the rules

on what you should do
when you’re young, middle-aged, and old,
or the six philosophical schools.
Religion without devotion
was for him no religion at all.
Yoga, ritual, fasting and charity
were beneath contempt
without a heartfelt song.
To Hindu and Muslim he told his truth

through poems, songs, and couplets.
He never took sides but shared his words
for the good of all. He was firm, never tried
to please the world.
Kabir didn’t care about caste or the rules
on what you should do
when you’re young, middle-aged, and old,
or the six philosophical schools.41
Hare (2011a) shows how much this picture changed in one century by exam-
ining Priyadas’s famous commentary on the Bhaktamāl, the Bhaktirasabodhinī.
Priyadas makes Kabir much more of a conventional Vaishnav, devoted to a
personal God usually called Hari, accepting caste, valorizing sect (sampradāy),
and benefiting from many miraculous divine interventions.
Nearly all scholars will take an interest in the Kabir of historical, social,
political, and literary contingency. For some, this is the only Kabir who is
interesting and credible. Authenticity is not a compelling topic of inquiry.
The Truth about Kabir/Kabir’s Truth

Scanning the writings of prominent Hindi literary scholars in the early
2000s, I found many quotations from Kabir but few citations of sources.
The writer might introduce a verse with, “As Kabir himself says,” or, “We
can address this question through Kabir’s own words”—without indicat-
ing the source. The obvious question was: What do we mean by “Kabir’s
own words”? Where do we locate “Kabir himself”? In his 2009 book,
Purushottam Agrawal advances the discussion significantly by evaluating
manuscript sources and seriously engaging with oral sources. However,
there still seems to be a problem with circular reasoning. Agrawal empha-
sizes that we must consider the totality of Kabir, not just certain themes.
He supports the reliability of the Granthāvalī by saying that it contains the
full diversity of Kabir’s themes. But those very themes are at issue. What is
the totality? If there should ever be convincing evidence of a “core” body of
Kabir works, would all the themes Agrawal admires in the Granthāvalī be
present, or would some emerge as more or less true to his profile?
If manuscripts are unreliable, what to say about the obscure notion of
Kabir’s truth? Here too we face the problem of circularity, since ideology
144 Bodies of Song
may determine what gets defined as Kabir’s truth. For example, in the
Damakheda panth, Kabir’s relationship with Dharamdas and their estab-
lishment of the sect with its lineage of avataric gurus are taken as sacred
truths. Thus mention of Dharamdas in the signature line, or emphasis
on guru-bhakti, may weigh on the side of “authenticity” for them, while
it may weigh on the other side for people outside the sect. Agrawal places
a high value on the poems of love and viraha expressed in a woman’s
voice, so he may consider their presence, along with other types, as evi-
dence for authenticity (Agrawal 2009a, chaps. 8–9). In my earlier work
I was inclined to find precisely those poems less authentic, since they
were farther from the center of “Kabir’s truth” as I preferred to see it
(Hess 1987b).
Are rural folk singers concerned about authenticity? Sometimes
yes, sometimes no. Occasionally Shabnam or I would raise doubts with
Prahladji about a particular song, and he would engage in conversation
about it. But these were more our questions than his. In 2002 he fre-
quently sang a song, Tujhe hai shauk milne kā. While it had a Kabir sig-
nature line, the musical style was clearly not of Malwa. Shekhar Sen, a
Mumbai classical singer who had created a very successful one-man show
about Kabir, once visited the village and told me that this song came from
a movie. I asked Prahladji where he got it. His reply: “I’m not sure, I heard
it somewhere and liked it.”
In 2001 Prahladji recorded a cassette called Dhanya kabīr. The title song
sets forth the Kabir Panth mythology about how the baby Kabir manifested
himself miraculously on a lotus on Lahartara Pond—not a mortal human
being but the divine avatar of the age. Since Prahladji claimed not to believe
in that mythology, Shabnam asked why he was propagating it by putting it
in a cassette that was sure to be popular. Shabnam also pointed out disturb-
ing marks of recently stoked anti-Muslim sentiment in the lyrics.42 Prahladji
appeared not to have thought about these matters. He liked the peppy tune,
and in the heyday of his positive association with the Panth, he might have
been showing deference to the sectarian story. After that—perhaps influ-
enced partly by Shabnam’s questions and even more by his falling-out with
the Panth—this song disappeared from his performances.43
Despite the apparent lack of concern over authenticity of particular
songs, Prahladji clearly believes that there is a meaning in the name Kabir,
a heart to the Kabir tradition, a profile to the great poet and satguru. His
spontaneous commentaries in performances emphasize certain things
again and again: the folly of narrow identities of religion, sect, caste, class,
nation, race, gender, as well as other limiting frameworks of thought; the
immediate availability of truth and liberation within our own body, ghaṭ
ghaṭ meṇ, in every body, or nij ghar, our very own home; the worthlessness
of words (kathanī) if not matched by deeds (karanī); the path of waking up
to the nature of our bodies, minds, habits, behaviors, social situations, lit
with flashing moments of humor, satire, warning, challenge, paradox; and
the importance of the guru, who sometimes seems to be a person outside
ourselves but is often declared to be none other than śhabda, the essential
Word that must be heard within.
In his book The Weaver’s Songs, after reviewing the histories of written
texts and mentioning the continuous background of oral transmission,
Vinay Dharwadker concludes that the Kabir tradition comprises a “com-
munity of authors” (Dharwadker 2003, 60). It is thus unnecessary to try
to tease out the voice of the individual Kabir who lived in the fifteenth
century. This may seem to dispense with the question of authenticity alto-
gether. But it also begs the question of what defines that community. Is it
just the tag line “Kabir says,” attached to any content whatever? Or is the
community of Kabir poets characterized by certain “Kabirian” ideas and
approaches? (See Hawley 2009, 24–48.)
Gangasharan Shastri, while mentioning respect for linguistic cri-
teria in editing the Mahābījak, obviously considered Kabir’s cen-
tral ideas (vichārdhārā) more important. Vichardhārā literally means
“thought-stream.” Once in a speech to an audience of thousands at his
own annual event in Lunyakedhi, Prahladji expressed the idea that the
river of Kabir’s truth had a mighty integrity, a set of great currents that
flowed on through history, beyond quibbles over what could or could not
be proved about the historical fi
gure Kabir:
People say that Kabir was a Chamar, a Balai, some low caste. Never
mind. Kabir is the source of all. Kabir is not the name of any indi-
vidual. If that’s the way we see Kabir, we don’t understand. Kabir
is our guru. Kabir is a stream, a flowing river. Kabir is a sign and a
message. And he never spoke of a Kabir Panth. “Kabir panth” means
Kabir’s path. A person who walks on that path is a Kabir Panthi. If
we talk of the Kabir Panth along with all the other sects, factions,
and religions, we’re very far from experiencing the truth. (Virmani
2008b at 57 min.)
146 Bodies of Song
Toward a Conclusion
Textual and oral approaches suggest two sorts of tactics. Bahadur Singh
hints briefly at these two methods in 1999. One is studying manuscripts.
The other is listening to the voices of singers and lovers of Kabir-vāṇī.
A third approach eschews the search for the “true Kabir,” assuming the
historical and sociological contingency of all texts and interpretations. All
three approaches are good. Sometimes they can talk to each other, some-
times not. It is a good idea for a student to immerse herself in all three, to
experience the different worlds that each constructs and the rewards that
each can offer. This chapter concludes with observations on the state of the
field and suggestions for future study.
However skeptical we may be about the reliability of early manuscripts,
no one would say they are irrelevant or uninteresting. Though many tex-
tual changes undoubtedly took place between Kabir’s death in the eastern
Hindi region and the inscription of the poetry 50 to 160 years later in
Rajasthan and Punjab, these manuscripts comprise an important set of
milestones in the history of Kabir texts. My 1980 dissertation included a
study of three Kabir collections that aimed at a comparative assessment of
themes and styles in these different sectarian compilations. Published as
an article in 1987, this study was very rough by today’s standards. I counted
the occurrence of key words with my hand and eye—pathetic instruments
when compared to today’s implacably accurate computers. Such a study
should be done again, using computerized searches, with carefully chosen
key words and a limited number of manuscript sources.
Along with the change from primitive tabulation to computerized pre-
cision, our knowledge of manuscripts has changed since 1987. In addition
to Callewaert’s Millennium Kabir, we have a meticulously edited selec-
tion from one of the best early Rajasthani collections, a manuscript dated
1614–1619 (Strnad 2013). We have information on earlier sources, includ-
ing the 1582 Fatehpur manuscript (Hawley 2005) and the manuscript pre-
cursors of the Ādi Granth, copied and studied thoroughly for the first time
by Gurinder Singh Mann (1996, 2001). The Goindval Pothis, assembled in
the early 1570s, are very close to the Ādi Granth as canonized in 1604, but
also have intriguing differences. They push the body of poetry stabilized
by the Sikhs back thirty years. Mann has told me that there are three Kabir
poems in the Goindval Pothis of approximately 1572 that do not appear in
the 1604 Ādi Granth or in any other old collection as far as he knows. These
three poems, as yet unstudied by scholars, now constitute the very earliest
manuscript appearance of Kabir. Mann has also revealed a fascinating bit

of information from his study of the earliest Sikh manuscripts. Two Kabir
poems were written into the 1604 Kartarpur Pothis but then were crossed
out and excluded from the Granth forever after. Both were ulaṭbāṃsī,
“upside-down language” poems with outrageous, nonsensical, sometimes
shocking imagery. Ulaṭbāṃsīs appear everywhere that one finds oral and
written Kabir traditions, east and west. They belong to a much older tra-
dition of mystical poetry using such language in meaningful ways (Hess
and Singh 2002, 135–61). One of the deleted poems from the Kartarpur
manuscript seems to have been particularly offensive, drawing a picture
of crazy mixed-up family relations, with the opening line, “People, look at
God’s betrothal. The mother married her son and lived with her daugh-
ter.” Someone crossed it out and wrote “useless” in the margin. The Sikh
gurus apparently had a strong preference for plain language and domestic
propriety. They also emphatically avoided anything that had even a whiff
of tantric influence (Mann 2001, 114–15).
The biggest problem in my 1987 study is my acceptance of the Bījak on
an equal plane with the manuscripts from the West. As discussed above,
so far we have no reliable manuscript of the Bījak earlier than 1805. I have
never been a manuscript hunter or a textual editor, so I haven’t tried to
extend the search. But someone should. I am not ready to believe that the
Bījak can be entirely discarded as a significant early collection, or that in
all of the eastern Hindi region there is no hope of finding evidence of early
Kabir texts. David Lorenzen has examined the manuscripts in the Kabir
Chaura headquarters in Varanasi without finding an early copy of the
Bījak. Writing The Bījak of Kabir in 1983, and citing P. N. Tiwari’s 1961 sug-
gestion to the same effect, I said that “hidden treasures” might be waiting
to be discovered in the Kabir Panth ashrams scattered through U.P. and
Bihar (Hess and Singh 2002, 166). I also noted that the Bhagatahi lineage
of the Kabir Panth, which is smaller and has received less attention than
the Kabir Chaura and Damakheda panths, uses a recension of the Bījak
that is shorter than and organized differently from the better known Kabir
Chaura version. Shorter is often better in manuscript sifting. The hypo-
thetical manuscript hunter I am conjuring should be sure to pay atten-
tion to Bhagatahi centers, as well as looking for other sects in the eastern
regions that might have kept collections, as the Sikhs and Dadu Panthis
did in the West.
Oral and written traditions can obviously be studied separately. Can
they communicate with each other? Perhaps so. I am imagining the
148 Bodies of Song
possibilities of work yet to be done. A well thought-out computerized study

of key words with carefully selected written sources could yield an enlight-
ening picture of themes and salient language in these sources. Computers
can now bring forth many types of subtle and interesting information.44
A researcher might consult with other scholars in the process of choos-
ing manuscripts and key words. It might be possible to include the Bījak
in such a study, with a different kind of valuation based on the lack of
early manuscripts (a negative) and representation of the eastern region (a
positive).
Would this sophisticated and sensitive search of written sources reveal
a deeper substrate, a more omnipresent thematic-stylistic stream, along
with distinguishable regional and sectarian variations? Would it help to
establish a distinct voice of Kabir? If so, could we compare our discoveries
based on written sources with the voices of Kabir preserved in the living
oral traditions that Kapil Tiwari describes with such passionate admira-
tion, and that I have begun to document in this book? There may be imag-
inative ways to do so. One approach might be an ethnographic inquiry
into “Kabir’s truth” or the “essence of Kabir” (kabīr sār). Tiwari located the
essence in the key word shūnya. What would others say? In living tradi-
tions of the early twenty-first century, I asked a few singers and lovers of
Kabir to tell me what they considered Kabir’s most important teaching or
essential point. The interviews did not go very well. Would more extensive
and skillful inquiry of this kind lead to new insights, or just to a series of
dead ends in a maze of words?
Both the oral and written approaches should be juxtaposed with social
and historical studies of “contingent” Kabir. Some will concentrate on
just one of these approaches. Others will find it interesting to try to dis-
cover deeper truths (in any sense) about Kabir by crisscrossing among
them. Either way can yield good results. I remember something Charlotte
Vaudeville said when I first met her in Pune around 1976. Recognizing
the vastness of our field of study and the limited nature of what any one
person can do, she commented, “J’apporte ma pierre à l’edifice.” To this
building project, I carry my stone.
4
In the Jeweler’s Bazaar

Malwa’s Kabir
The songs of Malwa tell many stories, opening knowledge in surprising

ways. Over time I came to appreciate how rich and precious they are—how
they are made from people’s lives.
Once in the rainy season, looking from Prahladji’s rooftop verandah
over the green expanse of the countryside—studded with trees and bushes,
shining with silver and slate-colored ponds—I imagined the land littered
with piles of jewels. The jewels were songs, multicolored and abundant.
Their facets, rough and smooth, reflected the green shoots of peanuts and
wheat, the bullock carts and birds, the village walls and wells, the roads,
rocks, water, and weather. They reflected families, relationships and emo-
tions, marriages, and cremations.
Through the songs I saw markets and workers—cloth and weavers, pot-
tery and potters, jewelry and goldsmiths, and vegetable sellers with their
balance-scales. I smiled at local humor and satire, nodded at plainspoken
morality. I also saw inside the body, wondrous landscapes, skyscapes, radi-
ance and resonance, flowers and bees, shimmering in the experiences of
poets, singers, listeners.
The market of jewels is arrayed in your body.

Take what your heart desires, my dear.
The jeweler strings diamonds,
the fool strings stones.1
One day Prahladji’s wife Shantiji spoke of how the village people had
an intimate familiarity with the images in Kabir songs. Over the years,
150 Bodies of Song
most outsiders who came to Lunyakhedi to meet the famous folksinger

paid little attention to his wife or the other women of the household. The
women were used to remaining unobtrusive. But Shabnam had featured
beautiful interactions with Shantiji in two of her films, and Shantiji had
received a lot of enthusiastic feedback from city people for the depth, sen-
sitivity, and clarity of her remarks.
In August 2012, fourteen people from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and
Auroville (plus one American, me) attended a four-day workshop at the
Tipanya home in Lunyakhedi. Prahladji, along with his family and mandalī
members, led sessions where we sang, listened, and discussed. Phalguni,
a Mumbai lawyer who knew the songs better than most, requested Thārā
bharyā samand māhi hīrā—a song whose refrain says, “In that huge ocean
there is a jewel. The deep-sea diver plunges and brings it back. In your
body the chain of wisdom is twisted. The satguru untangles it.”
Each stanza is rich in imagery. Two stanzas evoke the sounds and
sights of a village in the rainy season:
In the garden a nightingale [koyal] sings,

in the forest a peacock cries.
The waves of [the rainy month of ] Savan swell.
Dry grass and straw have been burnt,

the Tij festival of Savan is coming.
One day, everything turns around.
There was a discussion of what all this meant. While we city people worked
on basic vocabulary, Shantiji came up with a spiritual explication. The dry
grass and straw left over from the seasons of planting and harvesting, she
said, are the unwholesome tendencies (anger, lust, greed, etc.) within us,
which at this point can be burnt up. When that happens everything turns
around. We are transformed. A little later she and I talked further.
Linda (L): People like it when you sing and speak up.
Shantiji (S): (smiling) I know they do!
L: You usually keep quiet while your husband does the talking. But you
know all the bhajans and understand them well.
S: When you live here and experience all the things mentioned in the bha-
jans, understanding comes naturally. We hear the koyal bird singing,
we hear the peacock. We know the rain, the swelling waves of water.
In the Jeweler’s Bazaar 151
We burn the dry grass. Automatically we understand how things turn

around. It’s like that when you sit and practice sumiran [meditation,
concentration on the divine name]. From experience you know what
the bhajans are saying.
In this chapter, I try to take readers inside the Kabir repertoires

of Malwa, presenting a body of songs that I encountered in the early
twenty-first century. Our understanding will always be limited and will
sometimes be wrong, as most of us don’t hear the koyal bird or burn the
dry grass. But by listening, singing, and getting to know people, we can
learn. If we also happen to know something about the history of written
texts, religious and social formations, and bodies of song in other regions,
that knowledge will interact in interesting ways with what we learn on the
ground in Malwa.
Right away, we have to think about how to organize the material. Do
the songs fit into categories, indigenous or otherwise? Can we list themes?
Do patterns of composition, association, and meaning emerge in a par-
ticular way from oral-musical modes of transmission?
Five He-Snakes, Twenty-Five

She-Snakes: Making Categories
Classification is a fundamental way of “making culture.” In Kabir lore, we
frequently hear the numbers five and twenty-five, signifying the functions
and characteristics of physical existence. “Five” is explained either as the
five elements of material nature (earth, air, fire, water, space) or as the five
senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell). Each of these five is linked
to five prakṛitiyāṇ (natural substances or processes), their combinations
giving rise to twenty-five categories of body-mind experience.2 Most of us
are not the drivers of, but are driven by, these natural processes. So “5-25”
in Kabir stands for forces linked to our body-mind systems that keep us
bound and unconscious. Sometimes they are imaged as animals, like the
snakes of the heading above, or the five mṛigalā (male deer) and twenty-five
mṛigalī (female deer) of other bhajans.3 Sometimes just the numbers five
and twenty-five signify the problematic conditions of material existence.4
Traditional categories like 5-25 occur within Kabir songs and couplets.
Then there is the question of grouping the songs and couplets themselves.
The practice of categorizing texts goes back to the earliest manuscripts. The
152 Bodies of Song
Sikh Ādi Granth of Punjab classifies the songs by musical ragas and does
not classify the couplets. Dadu Panthi manuscripts from Rajasthan do not
classify the songs but often organize the couplets into thematic sections
called anga—meaning limb, organ, part, or (in a literary context) genre.
The anga convention gradually became influential and today is likely to be
seen in printed collections that are not based on particular manuscripts.
I have even seen anga categories used on an audio CD of sākhīs sung by
Purushottam Jalota. The Granthāvalī manuscript, which probably dates to
the early seventeenth century in Rajasthan, has the sākhīs organized under
fifty-two angas that are interesting to peruse.5 The anga sections are very
uneven in length, the shortest having two sākhīs and the longest having
dozens. I will give the first five here and the full list in the notes:
1. gurudev—the revered guru

2. sumiraṇ—remembering/chanting/meditating on [the divine name]
3. viraha—separation [ from the beloved]
4. gyān viraha—separation in the mode of [yogic] knowledge
5. parchā—acquaintance/knowledge/experience6
To represent the Kabir repertoires of Malwa, I will also create some

headings. There are certain themes I am interested in, such as guru,
body, beloved, death, delusion, and joy. There are certain images and
keywords I would like to trace—cloth; mirror; jewels; drunkenness; the
cord (ḍor) that is a vital connector; the country (deśh) where the singer
belongs, or does not belong; and the quality of otherness (nyārā) or emp-
tiness (shūnya) in nirguṇ expression. There should also be a category for
social criticism—poems that comment on caste, sectarianism, hypocrisy,
superstition, arrogance, ostentation, violence. As I continue listing themes
and keywords, my proposed categories begin to look like Borges’s surreal
Chinese encyclopedia.7 I will not be able to follow all these threads in the
presentation that follows. My intention here is to draw attention to the
process of category making.
Classifying Kabir compositions is an inevitable exercise, but the way
is full of pitfalls. Any given bhajan contains multiple themes. The themes
are interdependent. If we hang a certain song on the “guru” theme, it usu-
ally just means that the song begins with the guru. Later it may talk about
in-breath and out-breath, the mind, the body, or drunkenness. A poem
about the beloved soon becomes a poem about the deśh, that “other” coun-
try; or a reminder of the imminent withering of the body; or an evocation
of the glowing inner world of the yogic practitioner. Even a poem of blatant
social satire may have a refrain that directs us back to self-knowledge, urg-
ing us to open the window to our own interior.
Kabir poetry itself likes to articulate a space between the presence and
absence of categories, both using them and denying them. One poem
says: “In this body sun and moon, right here a million stars.” Another
says: “In my country there’s no moon, no sun, no million stars.”8 The lat-
ter song exemplifies what I sometimes call “deep nirguṇ”: it tries to take
away everything, leaving us with no ground beneath our feet, no pairs
of opposites, no concepts. But in the middle of the same song come two
stanzas (mentioning Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Veda, and Gita) that could be
placed in a category of poems that are critical of religion.
aivī aivī seṇ—Such Signs
Such signs my true teacher showed me—

it can’t be spoken with the mouth, oh sadhu
in my country there’s no ground, no sky

no wind, no water, oh sadhu
in my country there’s no moon, no sun

no million stars, oh sadhu
in my country there’s no Brahma or Vishnu

no Lord Shiva, oh sadhu
in my country there’s no Veda, no Gita

no song, no couplet, oh sadhu
in my country there’s no rising or setting,

no birth, no death, oh sadhu
Step by step a truth-seeker arrives.

Kabir, a seeker, climbed to nirvana, oh sadhu.
I stop writing for twenty minutes and sing the song, joining with
Shabnam’s voice on a recording. Singing it a few times, getting more of it
by heart, I realize that naming themes is only a problem if I try to categorize
whole bhajans. Sometimes that works, but more often it doesn’t. The way
to locate themes in oral texts is in lines, half-lines, passages, and extended
metaphors. Lord’s oral-formulaic theory blooms in my experience.9
154 Bodies of Song
Getting our heads out of books and tuning in to oral-performative life

reveals a good deal about the dynamics of categories. An interesting orga-
nizing factor in a performance is the relationship of sākhīs to bhajans—a
relationship of which we would have no clue if we knew only written texts.
In books, the couplets (called sākhī, saloku, or dohā) and the songs (called
pad, śhabda/śhabad, or bhajan) are always in two separate compartments.
They are literary genres. In folk performance in the Hindi region, they are
nearly always mixed. A bhajan is preceded by one or more sākhīs, which
should be thematically related to the bhajan. An expert singer can string
together a wonderful series of sākhīs, each touched off by the last, and each
expressing some aspect of what is to come in the bhajan. The sākhīs are
sung in a musically different way from the bhajans, producing melodic and
rhythmic variations that experienced audiences find pleasing. Malwi sing-
ers sometimes use a form called rekhtā, in place of or along with sākhīs, to
introduce a bhajan. Rekhtā as they perform it is a dense and intense metri-
cal form whose melody has a more dramatic quality than the sākhī.10
In a performance, songs are connected to each other in intricate and
ever-changing ways. Song A may lead directly to song B on one occasion, to
song C on another, or to song X on another, and in each case the transition
will appear seamless. Sometimes performers refer to traditional classifica-
tions found in written collections. For example, they commonly refer to songs
about the guru (which are called guru vandanā, homage to the guru, or guru
mahimā, the guru’s greatness). Singers also speak of a type called chetāvanī,
“warning.” Chet means consciousness, awareness, attention. Chetnā as a verb
means to wake up or become conscious. Chetāvanī songs are those that warn
of the imminence of death, the shortness of time, the rare opportunity of
human birth, or the massive presence of delusion. They exhort us to wake up.
chet re nar chet re, thāro chiḍiyā chug gaī khet re, nar nugar re
ab to man meṇ chet re, ab to dil meṇ chet re
Wake up, man, wake up! The birds have eaten your fields,
and you still don’t know the guru.
Wake up now in your mind, wake up now in your heart.
Ulaṭbamsī, upside-down language, is a type that has a strong presence

in written collections through the centuries, and singers also know it as
a category. It signifies a class of poems that use paradoxes, riddles, and
seemingly nonsensical images to evoke a state of mind beyond the habit-

ual (Hess and Singh 2002, 135–61).
Prahladji told me that there is a general order in which he prefers to
present bhajans in a performance. In nearly all cases he starts with one or
two bhajans acknowledging the guru. After that, he likes to go from what
is relatively easy to understand to what is deeper and more difficult. The
early-stage bhajans tend to be more didactic: we are wasting our life; we
are ignoring the wisdom that comes from the guru; we are lost in pride,
attached to pleasures and possessions, worshiping rocks, rushing off on
pilgrimages while ignoring our inner condition. Some of us are even eat-
ing nonvegetarian food! These bhajans are often entertaining, with funny
examples and down-to-earth imagery. At the other end are those that speak
of what can’t be spoken. They may string together negations, deny that
there is any ground to stand on, and use mysterious language, suggesting
a consciousness that does not belong to the conceptual mind.
Actually Prahladji sings the most “difficult” bhajans very rarely in pub-
lic performances, as he doubts that people can understand them. Because
I liked them so much, he produced a great many examples for me. I tried
to convince him to sing them onstage more, asserting that people would
be able to appreciate them. Sometimes they came forth spontaneously in
settings where the mood was right, but mostly he ignored my preference
and left them out of public concerts. Some exceptions to this rule can
be explained by performative considerations. For example, the ulaṭbamsī
song Shodhū śhabad meṇ kanihārī is funny, and he plays it for its capac-
ity to amuse. “Koī suntā hai guru gyānī,” full of strange and hard-to-
comprehend imagery, has such a vigorous, attractive melody and rhythm
that the energy carries it along. It also has comprehensible bits, includ-
ing the refrain. The audience enjoys it whether they understand the hard
parts or not.
While the extreme ends of Prahladji’s easy-to-hard progression can be
associated with particular songs, the large space in between is ambiguous.
A song can dart with lightning speed from the simple to the profound,
from the comprehensible to the mysterious. We can be chuckling one
moment, thunderstruck the next. Is a song easy or hard? Is it satirical or
mystical? Even at the more obvious points—the beginning and ending of
a program—I don’t think Prahladji adheres reliably to the theoretical order
he outlined for me.
More than any logical sequence, Prahladji seems to follow streams of
association that are intuitive and feeling-driven. A song is much more
156 Bodies of Song
than its lyrics. A song is sound. A song is a mood, an environment of

emotion—bhāv in Hindi. Classification depends on cognitive content.
Bhāv arises with melody, imagery, rhythm, strings of noncognitive asso-
ciations, factors that can’t necessarily be named—the twang of a tambūrā
string; the lighting up of a listener’s face; strange confluences inside the
singer’s brain, stomach, nervous system. A song is also performance,
and the singer is usually keenly aware of what is “working” with the
audience.
So I will follow my own set of associations in the exposition below,
and you will understand that this series of headings is a device to make a
chapter, inspired by my experiences with singers and texts, conditioned by
my own affinities.
Guru
There is no doubt about where to start. We start with the guru. Almost
without exception, Prahladji begins a concert with a song in praise
of the guru. In nirguṇ bhakti—devotion to an ultimate reality beyond
form—devotees still have the inescapable human need for form. Icons
of God, like the images found in Hindu temples, with their narratives,
paraphernalia, and external rituals, are rejected. Where can the devotee
direct her attention, her emotional energy, her yearning for awaken-
ing, and her gratitude for grace? In the nirguṇ world, the guru tends to
fill this space. Who is the guru? The guru is both outer and inner. The
reference may be to a human being who gives priceless guidance or to
an innate source of knowledge that is always with us. This ambiguity
makes the guru’s presence in the poetry rich and resonant. The guru
may be praised in extravagant terms, worshiped as a stand-in for God.
But at any moment the song may turn us in upon ourselves, where
the guru’s knowledge actually exists. Awakening is an experience that
breaks boundaries, not a clinging to any form. A guru is one who inex-
plicably opens the ungraspable door to this experience. A very popular
couplet of Kabir says:
Guru and God are before me.

Whose feet should I touch?
I offer myself to the guru
who showed me God.
Prahladji often opens his concerts with a spirited bhajan that has this
refrain:
The guru gives ease to my mind, always eases the mind.

The guru cuts through nets of karma,
and people find joy.
The guru cuts through nets of delusion,
and people find joy.
While the song praises the guru from beginning to end, in the middle it
touches on an intimate experience deep within the body, where liberation
happens in the breath:
The breaths of right and left streams

flow into the center.
Between down and up
the mind becomes still.
Again and again we seem to hear praise of the outer guru; then the song
subtly directs us to what is within ourselves. One song has the refrain,
Guru sam dātā koī nahīṇ—”There is no giver to compare with the guru.”
Throughout the song, the natural inference is that the outer human guru
is being saluted. But at the end we hear:
Kabir says, what have you lost? What are you searching for?
A blind person doesn’t see. Brilliance gleams in your body.
Moving through many examples, we will see how the categories, the
major motifs indicated in my headings, interpenetrate each other. Later
I will introduce a section called “Body.” But before we can get there, the
“Guru” category has taken us straight into the body. And after we get there,
the body will take us back to the guru.
Along with guru, Kabir uses the term satguru, true guru. Sometimes sat
seems to intensify the meaning; sometimes the choice seems to be a matter
of metrical convenience. I have heard that satguru implies God. Kabir himself
is called satguru by his followers, many of whom regard him as God. I have
also heard that Kabir uses the term satguru when he wants to differentiate
the true guru from all the false gurus, whom he never hesitates to criticize.
158 Bodies of Song
In March 2002 I went with the mandalī for a performance in

Omkareshwar on the Narmada River, during the annual pilgrimage there.
We went with huge crowds for darśhan at the great Shiva temple. The next
morning in predawn darkness, Prahladji and I had this conversation:
Linda Hess (LH): What do you think about all these pilgrims coming to
bathe and take darśhan? Do Hindu festivals have any meaning for you?
Prahladji (PT): Nothing special. If you’re not clean inside, what good does
it do to take a bath? Still, when people come with faith and devotion,
some change may take place in them.
LH: What about the Kabir Panth? Do you believe Kabir is the eternal satya-
purush taking different avatars in the four yugas, and do you believe
that the Kabir Panth achāryas and their lineage are avatars of Kabir
himself?
PT: No, I don’t believe that. Satyapurush means a purush (man/person) in
whom satya (truth) exists. God is truth.
LH: You sing ho jā hoshiyār sadā guru āge—be alert, the guru is always in
front of you. So who is this guru? Some particular person?
PT: No, this has nothing to do with the gross body (sthūl sharīr).
For a long time I felt removed from the guru theme, as I associated
it with culturally prescribed forms of obeisance to people who might or
might not deserve the reverence they got. But gradually a change took
place in my viewpoint. New insights about this and other motifs came in
unlikely places, taking me by surprise. In 2003 I organized a U.S. tour for
Prahladji and his group, in which they did about thirty-five performances
in two months.11 One day we arrived at Syracuse, having driven across
New York state from Rochester. Though we were performing at the univer-
sity, I had arranged an overnight stay at the Zen Center of Syracuse, whose
head teacher was a friend. Our Zen hosts asked if the group could do
some informal singing for them that evening. We were tired and rumpled
but couldn’t say no. Only about eight people showed up to listen, which
I thought reduced the likelihood of a spirited engagement. Prahladji asked
them about Zen Buddhism. He also knew that I practiced Zen. Someone
briefly described their practice. When he declared that he would sing
Mhārā satguru baniyā bhediyā—a song I barely knew—I tried to explain
the refrain in English, consulting with him in Hindi. As the vivid, concrete
meanings of the words came through to me, I got more and more excited.
I thought that the song described the true vitality of the teacher-student
relationship in a way that Zen practitioners, familiar with stories of inti-

mate and subtle encounters between teachers and practitioners long ago
in China and Japan, would get.
mhārā satguru baniyā bhediyā, mhārī nāḍī re pakaḍī hāṇ

un nāḍī meṇ laharī upje, hiyo hiloro khāy
guru mhāne gyān daī gyā
mhārā tan bīch diyo lakhāy, sumiran chetan kar gyā
My true guru is a bhediyā, declares this refrain. Bhediyā has a double

meaning: one who can reveal mysterious knowledge (bhed); and one who
pierces (bhednā, to pierce). I explained that this means the teacher has
opened my understanding and at the same time has opened me, pierced
through me. The process is then described in potent physical images:
s/he touched my pulse and waves surged in my veins, my heart rocked (in
the waves). This is how the guru gave me knowledge: s/he gave me vision
in the middle of my body. The mantras I recited turned to shimmering
consciousness.
As he sang, Prahladji was transported. Or was I the one who was trans-
ported, understanding these words for the first time? Prahladji closed his
eyes and seemed to plunge into himself; then he opened his eyes and
gestured toward the people in the room. I never expected the atmosphere
to ignite in this little living room where a few tired men from village India
were singing to a few Americans who had adopted a Japanese style of
meditation. Each stanza got more intense, more exuberant. The repeated
refrain was a return to incredulous joy: He touched my pulse and waves
surged, my heart rocked, he gave me vision in the middle of my body!
How could such a thing happen? Hearing this song performed with such
passion by a rural Indian singer in a Zen household in upstate New York,
I suddenly felt the meaning of a true teacher, one who knows you, touches
you, and seems to give you your own life.
After that, I didn’t feel detached from songs that conveyed the wonder
of the guru’s gift.
Social Criticism
Kabir has a special reputation for his social critique—attacks on hypoc-
risy, pretension, superstition, sectarianism, greed, and abuse of power.
Other bhakti poets may touch on these themes, but no one goes as far
160 Bodies of Song
as Kabir. He especially delights in showing up the delusion and malev-

olence of religious people. Belonging to a low-status community (he
was an unlettered Muslim artisan, whose recently converted commu-
nity would have been marked as Shudras in the Hindu hierarchy), he
is keenly aware of and quick to denounce caste.12 So in modern North
India, he is a favorite of activists who fight for social equality and who
resist communal hatred and violence. A song from the Malwa reper-
toire that represents this genre well is called “Where did you come from?
Where are you going?”
Where did you come from?

Where are you going?
Get the news from your own body!
If you find a true guru,
you’ll get the secret.
The window within
will open.
Hindus, Muslims,
both deluded, always fighting.
Yogis, sheikhs, wandering Jains,
all of them lost in greed.
The qazi reads the Quran,

then grabs someone’s land.
Not knowing the lord in every breath,
he grabs a chicken, smashes its head.
Someone meditates, stock-still,

but inside his thoughts are jumping.
Outside saintly, inside filthy,
mind tainted, he swallows a fish.13
Turning their beads, fasting, painting their arms

and foreheads, making mystical gestures,
taking trips to holy places,
they sing, strum, and please the world,
but miss the news
from their own bodies.
By rote they read the Gita,

without a spark of consciousness.

coming and going,
they wander on.
This poem consists almost exclusively of social commentary, but with a

shot of inwardness. The refrain reminds us of what is in contrast to all
this violence, greed, dishonesty, and foolishness in the world: something
we can learn by opening a window to our own interior, looking deep into
our own body.
Other poems are more inwardly oriented but give us a shot of social
commentary.
A carved statue stands in the temple.

Its mouth can’t speak.
The priest stands at the door.
Who can go in without his permission?
This stanza occurs in a song in the helī genre. Addressed in an intimate

voice to a female friend (helī), these songs may highlight imagery of lover
and beloved, of the mysterious country that is hard to enter, or of the
yogic body. The song quoted here, long a favorite in Malwa, never occu-
pied a “social critique” niche in my mind. The main theme is a constant in
Kabir: Why are you searching? Why are you running, exhausting yourself,
looking for truth or happiness in faraway places and external objects? The
musk deer who runs from forest to forest trying to find the source of the
enchanting fragrance hovering in the air fails to realize that the musk is
in its own body. A subset of the “why are you searching?” theme would
include sharp comments on temples, mosques, pilgrimage places, and stat-
ues of gods—all emphasizing the delusion of searching outside yourself.
But this stanza about the carved statue goes further. It alludes to
untouchability and to the widespread practice of denying temple entry to
people of the lowest castes. This is still an issue in India, even though
discrimination against “untouchables” is declared illegal in the constitu-
tion. For millennia priesthood has been the preserve of Brahmin males,
who have literally and figuratively guarded the doors so that their holy
images would not be polluted by bodies regarded as intrinsically filthy.
So the stanza above is a double-barreled critique. First, the statue is not
alive; it has a mouth but can’t speak. Second, the statue and its priest sym-
bolize the oppression and exclusion of Dalits by upper castes through
162 Bodies of Song
the ages. Kabir rejects both in one flourish. In Malwa a large majority of
Kabir singers and devotees are Dalits. The meaning of this verse does not
escape them.
After dwelling on this stanza, I went back and read the whole song again
with different eyes. Suddenly the protest against untouchability appeared
everywhere, not just in these lines. The statue is mute, but the real Ram
speaks. Where? In every body. Every body. The Ganges springs from the
sky, from the mountain (the forehead chakra, where three streams meet).
Everyone has the same clothes to wash (the five elements, our physical con-
stituents), and it isn’t soap that gets them clean. Everyone who finds the true
guru, who hears the voice of Ramji within, is stainless. In contrast to the priest
who shuts the temple door, Kabir in the last stanza opens the heart’s lock.
We conclude with a bhajan that makes specific reference to caste. Rām
rame soī gyānī asserts that the real gyānī—possessor of knowledge—is
the one in whom the real Ram roams freely (ramnā: to wander happily,
to roam, to take delight in). After several stanzas that break down labels,
social roles, and expectations of enlightenment in future lifetimes, the
song ends like this:
The Brahmin is clay,

the Baniya is clay,
the whole creation is clay.
In this clay, everyone meets.
This is Kabir’s message.
Mind
In February 2002 I was on the road with Prahladji for the first time. We
went to Magahar, Uttar Pradesh, the place where Kabir is believed to have
died; to nearby Gorakhpur, headquarters of the Nath Panth, a sect of yogis
associated with the legendary founder Gorakhnath; and to Kushinagar,
where the Buddha entered parinirvāṇa, as Buddhists like to say—in com-
mon language, where he died. Prahladji and I barely knew each other.
“Teach me something by Kabir,” I said in the car. “On what subject?” he
asked. “On the mind,” I immediately replied. He shot back:
dauḍat dauḍat dauḍiyā, jahāṇ lag man kī dauḍ

dauḍ thake man thir bhayā, vastu ṭhaur ki ṭhaur
Hearing the sākhī for the first time, I didn’t understand it. Prahladji started
explaining in Hindi. When I finally understood, I said, “Ah!” Kabir under-
stands the mind. He nails it. Here is a translation, not nearly as good as
the original.
Running, running, more running,

how far can the mind run?
Tired of running, the mind is still.
Right here!
Here it is!
The “it” of the last line is not the mind but the “thing,” vastu. What thing
is this? It is the very thing, the essential thing, the thing one has been
searching for.
Five years later, at home in Bangalore, Shabnam sang a string of sākhīs
on the mind. She was an enthusiastic pupil of Prahladji, singing Malwi
Kabir in her robust, melodious voice, skillfully strumming the tambūrā
with her right hand and jingling the kartāl in a lively rhythm with her left.
Along with the sākhī just quoted, she sang three more:
Greedy mind, grasping mind,

thieving mind, jumpy mind.
Don’t chase after the mind’s thoughts.
There’s a new thought
every second.
Don’t chase after the mind’s thoughts,

the mind has thousands of thoughts.
If you can ride on the mind’s back
I’ll call you a holy one.
As many as waves in the sea,

the rushing streams of the mind.
Pearls comes forth spontaneously
when the mind rests.
The slow reflective style of the sākhīs gave way to up-tempo strum-
ming and jingling as she started a bhajan on the theme of the mind. We
sang together—our custom on monsoon mornings in Bangalore, before
breakfast.
164 Bodies of Song
Teach your mind like this,

teach your useless mind like this.
Without seeking, how will you find?
Without looking, how will you see the secret?
Listen you staggering vagabond,
listen you wise sage.
After this refrain, the song gives a series of parallel examples that show a
mind properly attuned.
Like a woman acrobat climbing a rope

while her man beats the drum.
She sings as she climbs, but her awareness
is always on the rope.
Teach your mind like this . . .
Like a water-bearer who sets a brimming pot

on her head and walks home.
Swinging, swaying, she chatters away, but her awareness
is always on the pot.
Like a snake that slides through the forest

licking dew.
As it licks, it stays aware
of the gem on its head.
It would give up its life
for that gem.
Like a diver who plunges into the sea,

fully absorbed.
Kabir says, listen, seekers, friends,
he instantly reaches the jewels,
plucks them up
from the sea’s floor.
The vivid similes are all about concentration; we could also say devo-
tion. We see here how the fervor of bhakti can unite with the dhyān (medi-
tation) of the yogi. There is something that is most precious of all. Not only
precious, essential. Do you understand? If so, remember it every moment
(the practice called sumiran, remembrance, also merges here with bhakti
and dhyān). A key word that occurs in three stanzas is surat, rendered
here as “awareness.” The acrobat, water-bearer, snake, and pearl diver keep
their awareness steady no matter what else is happening. This sustained
awareness is in stark contrast to the mind’s greedy, grabby, hyperactive
rush in all directions. The song is also conspicuously set in the middle
of everyday life, not in a space of ascetic withdrawal. The traveling cir-
cus performers and the women gossiping as they go to and from the well
are images straight from rural life. I have seen tightrope walkers arrive at
the door of Prahladji’s village house, beating their drum and singing their
songs. The snake licking dew is a fabulous image, both mythic and mun-
dane, of a creature of earth eating its way through the day.
The latter part of the song emphasizes courage. The snake would
give its life for the gem on its head. The satī and pearl diver plunge into
the fire or the ocean.14 In other songs we hear of the warrior who enters
the battle sanmukh, face to face, while the coward turns tail and runs.
This readiness to die is not just literal (though in some moments it
might be literal). It also refers to letting go of the familiar self, the pos-
sessive self, the elaborately structured identity that the mind is devoted
to preserving.
Once we are alert to the nature of the mind and the possibility of a differ-
ent kind of awareness, we recognize references to it in less obvious forms.
Do one thing fully, all is done.

Try to do all, you lose the one.
For plentiful flowers and fruit,
the gardener waters the root.
Our understanding of “mind” becomes cumulative, associated with ever

more motifs and images, in no way confined to a set of poems on the mind.
The mind is busy, tricky, complex, on the go. The one thing it doesn’t know
how to do is stop. In contrast is something still (sthir/thir), deep (where the
pearl diver plunges), absorbed (magan, līn), empty (shūnya). The mind can
be brilliant and attractive—residing in a many-colored palace (rang mahal),
reveling in a multicolored bed (rang bhar sej). Somewhere, a white banner
flutters in emptiness. This other state comes across sometimes as calm and
empty, sometimes as drunken and mad. But it is always intense and devoid
of distraction.
166 Bodies of Song
magan bhaī he lāḍlī magan bhaī

piyā kī suratiyā dekh magan bhaī
Totally gone, my dear, totally gone

seeing the beloved’s face, I was lost and gone.
Or in a popular sākhī:
kaṭuk vachan kabīr ke sun ke āg lag jāī

gyānī to va magan bhayā, agyānī jal jāī
Kabir’s words are searing, just hearing

them sets off a fire.
The wise are completely immersed.
The ignorant burn.
How could one possibly get free from the rule of the mind? This is a
problem the mind can’t solve. Imagery gives hints. A thread or cord (ḍor,
tār) is said to stretch. . . . Where? How?
My mind is a thief. Make a cord of awareness.
***
The thread of awareness climbs to the sky.
Elsewhere we hear about a peak of emptiness, a white flag, in con-

trast to a colorful palace, a bright bed. Sometimes jewels are explained
as breaths. Sometimes the string of breaths, or the string of jewels, is
explained as the thread of awareness.15
Body
The body is a pot (ghaṭ) made of clay, earth, dust (māṭī). The fact of our uni-
versal, humble composition is a great equalizer, as in the verse cited above
about the brahmin, the merchant, and the whole creation. Remembering
this fact tends to cut through any arrogance or sense of superiority.
Clay says to the potter:

why do you press me down?
The day is coming
when I will press you down.
To say we are clay is to say we all die. But the theme of death is coming in
another section. Here we take a different angle on the body.
In every body, Ramji speaks.

In every body, the beloved speaks.
The ghaṭ, the clay vessel, is the most common image of the body in
Kabir. While “clay” may suggest death, a vessel is also a container.
Kabir is as interested in what the living body contains as in its eventual
disintegration.
Oh bird, my friend,
why do you wander
In the city of your body
is the sacred sound,
in your own green garden
is the true name.
Oh bird, my friend,
why do you sit
in the dark?
In the temple of your body
the light shines,
the guru’s teaching gleams.
Besides a pot, the body appears as a city, a country, a temple, a field, a

fort, a palace, a musical instrument. Occasionally the language is anachro-
nistic, as when a distinctly modern term for a big house shows up:
In the city of the body is a bungalow;

at its center is a secret place.
In what is probably the most famous of all Kabir songs, Jhīnī chadariyā,
the body is a cloth woven with wondrous subtlety:
Subtle, subtle, subtle

is the weave
of that cloth.
168 Bodies of Song
What is the warp

what is the weft
with what thread
did he weave
that cloth?
Right and left

are warp and weft
with the thread at the center
he wove
that cloth.16
The spinning wheel whirled

eight lotuses, five elements,
three qualities, he wove
that cloth.
It took ten months

to finish the stitching
thok! thok! he wove
that cloth.
Gods, sages, humans wrapped
the cloth around them
they wrapped it
and got it dirty
that cloth.
Kabir wrapped it with such care

that it stayed just the same
as it was at the start
that cloth.
Subtle, subtle, subtle

is the weave
of that cloth.
The more we turn our attention to songs of the body, the more we
recognize it as the very place where the elusive nirguṇ experience comes
forth. The metaphors that clothe this experience are primarily light and
sound, but also include flowing streams and other images.
ek bhāṇ vahāṇ kyā paḍī mhārī helī, kaḍoḍ bhāṇ parakāśh

Why speak of one sun, my friend? There a million suns blaze.
sunn mahal meṇ bājā bāje, kingarī ben sitārā

In the palace of emptiness an instrument plays—flute, lute, sitar.
suntā hai guru gyānī gagan meṇ āvāz ho rahī jhīnī jhīnī
The guru, the wise one, listens.
A voice vibrates in the sky, subtle,
very subtle.
pī le amīras dhārā gagan meṇ jhaḍī lagī

Drink the streams of nectar
that cascade from the sky.
The appearance of “sky” in the last two examples signals the yogic body.
In Malwa’s Kabir, we are never far from this anatomy of energy centers, chan-
nels, streams, breath, root, cave, lotus, sky-dome. The yogic language remains
simple, evoking right, left, and center channels (inglā, pinglā, suṣhumnā); a
spot where three streams meet (triveṇī or trikuṭī, usually explained as the ājñā
chakra, between the eyebrows); a vast sky revealed when the unified breath
reaches the highest chakra, the thousand-petaled lotus at the top of the head.
Along with visual metaphors are sonic ones: thunder, music, roaring; in tra-
ditional language, anahad nād, the unstruck/boundless sound, or śhabda,
the Word beyond words, the primal vibration, which the fortunate or deeply
devoted can hear in the name that the guru transmits, or in the bhajans that
they sing and listen to, or in their body, or in the air.
But it’s not all light and sublime sound in the town of the body. There
are brigands. There are hunters with weapons. There are hungry animals.
Who owns the city of your body? On the road, five guys robbed you.
Five guys, twenty-five guys. On the road, five guys robbed you.
The poet sings about how even the most famous sages from Sanskrit
scriptures, even divine avatars, got robbed by the five and twenty-five. He
uses the Hindi-English cognate verb, “looted.”
170 Bodies of Song
The same message comes through a farming metaphor in another song:
You didn’t listen to good advice,

so they’ve eaten your field.
Five stags, twenty-five does
live on this land.
As long as you stay awake,
they won’t eat.
As soon as you fall asleep,
they eat.17
And in a sākhī:
The good days have gone, you didn’t benefit from the guru.
What’s the point of crying now, when the birds have eaten your field?
Early on in my travels with Prahladji and his group, I became enam-

ored of “songs of the body”—a category I made up. In April 2002, on a
train coming back from a huge Kabir Panth convocation in Bandhavgarh,
Madhya Pradesh (M.P.), I asked Prahladji and his brother Ashok to help
me compile a list of songs that speak of the body—of how everything we
are searching for is immediately available within it, and of the nirguṇ real-
ity discovered in the body.
That evening, back in the village after long travels, there was no elec-
tricity and everyone was tired. Nevertheless, Prahladji called for all the
instruments to be brought out. They sat and sang—songs of the body.
Everyone looked beautiful in the dark with the light of one candle, white
clothes shining, faces faintly glowing, full moon and stars in the sky.
I said: “I don’t hear these songs in your programs.” Prahladji replied: “We
don’t sing them in programs because people don’t understand them. They
are too difficult. In our programs we have to sing what is suitable for our
audiences. We have to think of what would help them improve their lives,
change their habits, increase their love and goodwill.” Many of these songs
had slow, haunting tunes; they weren’t rousing and fun like most of those
I heard on stage and in the commercial cassettes.
The singers started dropping verses and confusing words. Prahladji
told me to rewind my tape recorder and made everyone start again. After
a while, Ashok got fed up. “How can you sing bhajans when you’re so
sleepy?” He got up and walked away, as did Ambaram and Ajay. I said,
“Everyone’s tired after so much traveling. Give it up and go to sleep.” But
Prahladji insisted on doing two more, just him and his tambūrā and kartāl,
with his wife Shantiji joining in.
I expected no more, but in the morning Shantiji said, “Time for
bhajans.”
“You have other work to do, don’t trouble yourself for me,” I replied.
“We have nothing to do,” said Shantiji.
Ashok, Ambaram, and Ajay came back. They’d looked up the trouble-
some words in the little notebooks where thousands of songs had been
written down over the years. Then they sang, full and magnificent, for
about forty-five minutes. One song, Yā ghaṭ bhītar (“In this body”), really
made me cry. When I cry my mind gets clearer, and some of the knots and
blocks that tie me up get washed away. I imagined how one day I would
write about the Malwa repertoires, and how I would describe this scene.
The two-year-old boy, whom they dote on from morning to night, bang-
ing little cymbals while the others sing. The men in morning lungīs and
t-shirts, in the privacy of their own home, singing and looking beautiful
beyond words. Prahladji, two brothers, two sons, Shantiji, and the baby
grandson all together.

In this body forests and hamlets, right here mountains and trees.
In this body gardens and groves, right here the one who waters them.
In this body gold and silver, right here the market spread out.
In this body diamonds and pearls, right here the one who tests them.
In this body seven oceans, right here rivers and streams.

In this body moon and sun, right here a million stars.
In this body lightning flashing, right here brilliance bursting.

In this body the unstruck sound roaring, streams of nectar pouring.
In this body the three worlds, right here the one who made them.
Kabir says, listen seekers: right here my own teacher.

172 Bodies of Song
Family Life
I don’t normally think of Kabir as shedding light on family life. He tends
to be severe when it comes to human attachments. The phrase koī nahīṇ
apnā rings through several songs: no one belongs to you. Apnā, one’s own,
is a poignant word in Indian family life. It signals who you are related to,
the network of connections that saves you from isolation, a familiar world
where you belong. When people wanted to let me know that they were
accepting me, not treating me as an outsider, they would call me apnā. The
noun apnāpan—one’s-ownness—suggests intimacy.
Familiar and familial are almost the same. Kabir seems to be more inter-
ested in what is strange, solitary, other, unexpected, foreign. Sometimes he
is downright harsh about the family:
It’s all illusion—mom, dad, the whole family,

beating your chest in mourning—illusion.18
Yet glimpses of family predicaments and bonds of affection in the

songs sometimes strike me as tender and compassionate—the relation-
ships all the more poignant as they are fragile and fleeting.
Here are two Malwi songs centered on a persona who has evoked
deep emotion in India from the fourth-century classical Sanskrit drama
Śhakuntalā to the latest Hindi films: a daughter leaving her natal family to
stay with her new husband and in-laws, usually far from home in painfully
unfamiliar surroundings. In the first song, she begs a brother to help her
escape from grief and abuse in her marital home (a situation frequently in
the news in India). The brother she addresses might be her own brother
on a visit, or someone she trusts in this alien landscape.
Go and tell them, good brother,

how it is with these in-laws,
go and tell my father and mother.
In my in-laws’ house, so much pain.

My sister-in-law torments me.
Birth, death, pregnancy, the pain
is too much to bear.
My young brother-in-law is obstinate,

he torments me so much, oh lord,
he speaks cruel and deceiving words,

I can’t bear it, oh lord.19
The song goes on to equate the in-laws’ house (sāsariyā) with the
worldly world (saṃsār) and the father’s house with a divine realm that may
be beyond this world. Even though the fourth and final stanza implies
world renunciation as a solution to worldly woes, the first three stanzas
still convey a sense of empathy with human love and suffering, a touching
awareness of the tension between love and nonattachment.
Oh save me, mother, now save me!

That son-in-law has come
to take me away.
This is the refrain to a song I heard several times from Narayan Singh
Delmia (of whom we’ll hear more in chapter 6) and his young friend
Arun Goyal, before I really understood it. It was one of those fast and
spirited bhajans that seemed to have a happy feeling. I soon learned that
somber themes are often performed in bouncing rhythms and catchy
melodies.
The double meaning in this song is sustained from beginning to end;
there is no easy resolution in renunciation as in the previous example.
Here the pathos of a young girl being forcefully taken from her natal to her
marital home by a stranger-husband becomes emblematic of all unreliable
connections, all separations, especially the ultimate one. The premature
departure of the child-bride clinging to her mother is exactly mapped onto
the moment when death comes to wrench everyone away—from family,
friends, one’s own body. The word for son-in-law (the girl’s husband) is
jamāī, which sounds like Jama/Yama, the lord of death.
Oh save me, mother, now save me!

That son-in-law has come
to take me away.
The son-in-law said, listen, mother,

listen to what I say.
This time I’m really going to take her,
so get her ready fast.
Oh save me, mother. . . .
174 Bodies of Song
The mother said, listen son-in-law,

listen to what I say.
My little child, my innocent girl—
how can I give her to you?
Oh this body’s made of five elements

and three qualities. It’s a thing
that doesn’t belong to you.
She can’t stay in your house.
Oh eight rooms and nine doors

are in this body. No matter how much
I run and dodge, he grabs my arm
to pull me away.
It’s the month of Sāvan,

the Tīj festival’s almost here.
My girlfriends are calling, my heart is feeling
the wish to play.
The seven brothers of that darling girl

patted her head.
Kabir says, listen truth-seekers:
she went off
down that road.
Oh save me, mother. . . .20
In a crucial episode of his life, Prahladji had a powerful urge to leave

his family, to give up all attachments and stay at the peaceful Kabir ashram
at Kudarmal. His account of that incident appears in c hapter 1. His wife
Shanti offers her own description in a filmed interview with Shabnam:
When my daughter Sona was five months old, he went to an ash-

ram. I don’t know what got into his mind, but in the ashram he
decided—I’m going to stay here. I’m not going home. Four or five
members of his manḍalī were there too. For four days they argued
with him. Come home! You have three small children, your mother
and father, your younger brothers, your sister. What will they think
of us? That we went with you and returned without you, leaving
you here? But he wouldn’t listen. Then the guruji of that ashram in
Kudarmal asked him—Son, have you accepted a guru?—Yes, sir.—
Will you listen to what a guru says?—Yes.—Then go. Go home and
take care of your responsibilities. Stay with your family, and sing bha-
jans. My husband said—I won’t go. The guruji said—Then you have
turned against the guru, you’re clinging to your own mind. You are
not a person who turns toward the guru [manmukhī ho, gurumukhī
nahiṇ]. Son, I’m telling you to stay with your family. When the guruji
told him that, he cried a lot. For fifty kilometers on the road, he went
on crying. (Virmani 2008a, translated from Hindi in subtitles)
When all this happened, Shantiji was living in Lunyakhedi with her
parents-in-law and the children, while Prahladji stayed separately in vil-
lages where he was posted as a teacher. After the Kudarmal incident, they
were worried.
Shantiji: My mother-in-law and father-in-law were afraid. Who knows?

He might abandon his wife and children and take off somewhere. In
those days we traveled by bullock cart. We didn’t have a motorcycle or a
bicycle. So the three children and I, we all went in a bullock cart along
with our bedding, clothes, pots and utensils, to Kathbaroda where he
was teaching. He came home from school and said—Why have you
come here? I said—Wherever you are is my home. He said—No, you
should have stayed and taken care of Mom and Dad. I said—They’re
the ones who sent me here. He said—OK, bolt the door and go to sleep.
I’m off to Gorkhedi to sing bhajans. (She laughs.) So we made our din-
ner and went to sleep.
Shabnam: How did that make you feel?
Shantiji: I felt pain inside, but then I tried to reason with myself. After
a while I got used to it. It’s all right. It’s not a bad thing to sing bha-
jans. Even while he was so absorbed in bhajans, he also took care of
our needs—clothes, food, house, he provided well and looked after the
family.
[Shantiji explains how in those days he did rigorous spiritual practice.
He went off alone in the middle of the night to meditate, bathed in the
176 Bodies of Song
river no matter what the weather, and ate only one meal a day. This
routine continued for some years.]
He would sit six hours meditating. . . . He liked quiet solitary places, no
crowds. I thought, fine. I’m getting this much of a shared life. Is there
any lack? God has given me children and this much companionship.
It’s a lot. My life is happy.
Efficiently shaping, rolling, and cooking chapatis throughout the con-

versation, Shantiji speaks of Prahladji’s detachment, his lack of emotional
involvement. (See Figure 4.1)
He doesn’t have attachment [moha] to anything. We may think that

we are his family, related to him as wife, son, daughter, brother,
sister. But he doesn’t have that kind of affection [lagāv]. Like yes-
terday, you were crying when you thought of your son. He doesn’t
have that.21 If we’re separated, he doesn’t have the kind of affec-
tion that will make him remember us. If he’s far away, he doesn’t
miss us.
Figure 4.1. Shantiji, Prahladji’s wife, makes chapatis during conversation in

kitchen. Photo by Shabnam Virmani.
Shabnam: Is that good or bad?

Shantiji: Look, we’re ordinary people. For us it’s bad. For him it’s
good, all good. Let’s say someone dies. Everyone’s eyes will be
wet, but not his. He’ll say—why weep for the dead? They’ve gone
to their home. One day, everyone has to go. If we talk to him of
love, he’ll say—love should be only for that one. If you’re joined
in love to that one, everything else is trivial.22
Once I asked Prahladji about the seeming contradiction between

detachment and love. Putting so much emphasis on the temporary nature
of the body, pointing out again and again that we can die the next day, the
next minute, and that our family members will be eager to get rid of the
corpse, dismissing bonds of mother, father, sister, brother, spouse as false,
was Kabir debunking human relationships? Why was he singing about
prem, love? “Come to the guru’s country, let me tell you about the city of
deep feeling, the city of love.” If not the ordinary thing that people like to
call love, then what is love? Prahladji smiled and said, “Love is the thing
that doesn’t decrease. Love is the thing that only increases [ghaṭata nahin,
baḍhā rahtā hai].”
Some sākhīs I learned in Malwa comment on the dilemma between
staying in the world and leaving it. They come down on the side of cultivat-
ing inner freedom—non-clinging and non-harming—right in the midst of
worldly life.
sādhū aisā chāhiye, dukhe dukhāve nāhiṇ

pān phūl cheḍe nahīṇ, par rahe bāgh ke māhiṇ
Here’s the kind of holy person we need:

one who doesn’t get hurt, doesn’t hurt others,
doesn’t meddle with leaves or flowers,
but stays in the garden.
jāgan hī meṇ sovnā, sovan hī meṇ jāg,

ek to ban meṇ ghar kare, ek ghar meṇ rahe berāg.
To sleep while waking,
to wake while sleeping.
One makes a home in the forest.
One stays home, free of attachment.
178 Bodies of Song
Once we were in Bhopal, where Shabnam had organized a recording

session for Prahladji and some other artists. We all disliked the atmo-
sphere of recording studios, so she had arranged a beautiful setting in
the Manav Sangralaya (Museum of Humanity), bringing field-recording
equipment and a sound recordist to one of the spacious thatched-roof clay
houses that had been built there to represent the region’s varied cultures.
Prahladji was in an excellent mood, singing song after song. His indi-
vidual expression came through much more clearly than usual, since this
time Shabnam had requested that he play and sing in the old-fashioned
way, with only his own tambūrā and kartāl for accompaniment. There were
no supporting voices, no drums, violin, or harmonium.
After four or five songs, he started one about the pardesī, the foreigner,
a theme I knew well. One of my favorite songs was Ham pardesī panchchhī,
inī des rā nāhīṇ—“I’m a bird from another country, I don’t belong in this
country.” Kabir reminds us that we are all foreigners by virtue of the
extreme brevity of our stay here, though most of us don’t recognize it. The
song Prahladji sang that day, addressed to the pardesī, had a quiet, melan-
choly feeling. Shabnam gently played the small cymbals.
Now how can I rely on you,

you foreigner
you traveler
from far away?
The walls have crumbled, the roof has collapsed,

the roof has mingled with dust, ah yes,
you foreigner,
you traveler
from far away. Ah yes.
As long as there was oil in the lamp, ah yes,

your temple glowed brightly,
you foreigner. Ah yes.
Now the oil has run dry, the wick has sputtered out, ah yes,
your temple has gone dark
The shopkeeper’s departed,

the market’s deserted, ah yes.
The lock remains
but he’s taken away the key
Kabir says, listen seekers, friends, ah yes.

Your swan has flown
to a town
beyond death
There was an intimate mood in the room. We could feel the soft con-
tours of darkness and light, the clear sounds of voice and instruments
filtering into palpable silence. When he reached the lines about lock and
key in the second-to-last stanza, Prahladji’s voice disappeared. He tried
but couldn’t sing. Our French friend Aurelie, who had been quietly taking
pictures of the session, caught a close-up—profiled face in deep shadow,
eyes closed, bits of glowing light on the nose and around the right eye, two
small shining streams of tears.
On the third try, Prahladji managed to sing the stanza in a quavering
voice. By the time he got to the end, the familiar “Kabir says,” he had
recovered. He didn’t say anything about it. But after that song, he seemed
to have more energy and lightness than ever.
Death
Do I really need to write more about death? I was building up to this
section, but now it seems anticlimactic. We have already gotten a
strong taste.
Death is a familiar presence in the songs of Kabir, as in those of the
Nath yogis, who often rub shoulders with Kabir in Malwa. Jāo nugurī (Go,
you who lived without a guru), one of the Malwi songs of death that stays
persistently with me, was presented in full in chapter 1.23 Here is another
one that we have heard from both Malwi and Rajasthani singers.
Stay alert. A thief is entering the city.

Stay awake. Death is entering your body.
He aims no arrow or pistol,

fires no rifle.
He ignores the rest of the city,
but wants to grab you.
He doesn’t break down the fort’s gate

or attack the castle.
180 Bodies of Song
He’s invisible. No one sees him coming or going.

He’s strolling around inside you.
The darling kids you clothed and fed

will tie you to a bamboo bed
and toss you out.
They’re scared of ghosts.
Kabir says, this is an alien country,

no one belongs to you. Fool,
you came to this world with fists clenched,
you leave with hands open.
We meet death in many “categories” of song. It becomes a dreadful

son-in-law and an insidious thief. It is in the house whose walls are made of
sand; the lamp with no oil; the unbaked pot that can revert to clay any sec-
ond; the instrument whose strings have snapped; the leaf that flies from the
tree never to return; the silent market where the merchant has gone away.
Don’t get attached to illusion,

don’t be proud of your body.
The body’s an unbaked pot,
a drop of dew.
Let a little breeze hit,
a little gust,
the body turns to dust.24
Misguided pride in the body is set against its extreme fragility. In the
following song, the body’s vigor and attractiveness are summed up in two
colors, kesariyā rang, gulābī rang—the colors of the fine spice, saffron, and
of the delicate rose.
Don’t be proud
will fly.
This world
is a bundle of paper.
A few drops fall, it melts away.

The golden color
will fly.
This world
is shrubs and sticks.
A touch of fire, it burns up.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is a patch of brambles
where you get tangled and die.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is a market fair
where a fool wastes his savings.
The golden color
will fly.
This world
is a glass bangle.
A little blow, it shatters.
The golden color
will fly.

No one else shares
your karma.
The golden color
will fly.
The most popular song sung by Prahladji in Malwa is a charming

little piece featuring a bullock cart. I don’t know why it is so popular,
182 Bodies of Song
but wherever he goes in Malwa, it has to be sung. If he doesn’t get to it,

someone will request it, shouting it out or throwing a note on the stage.
Maybe it’s the nostalgic tug of the bullock cart, with its big painted
wheels, its impossibly ancient, oddly comforting, slow, creaky way of
moving along. These carts are still common in the countryside but are
inevitably being replaced by tractors and other modern vehicles. Maybe
the lilting tune of this song helps to make it such a winner—starting at
a moderate pace and gradually speeding up, as if the bullock were get-
ting inspired to trot.
The song starts with a description of the cart, painted in bright colors
and driven by a woman, with Ram as a passenger. The second stanza is
plainly didactic, talking about the danger of getting stuck before reaching
your goal, and how the virtuous ones will finish the journey while the bad
ones will crack up. Then we hear of healers being called, bringing herbs
and roots, but to no avail. The fourth stanza is talking about a dead body,
but in strikingly light-hearted terms.
Four fellows met and soon agreed

to build a horse of wood.
They hauled it to the burning ground.
It blazed up, just like Holi!
The wooden horse is a euphemism for the bamboo litter made to carry a
corpse. The comparison of the funeral flames with the raucous bonfires of
the Holi festival is decidedly irreverent.
This delightful and well-loved ditty concludes with a grief-stricken
woman facing widowhood, and the dour response of Kabir:
The woman sobbed and cried:

We were joined, now we’re broken!
Kabir says, listen seekers:
the one who joins
is the one who breaks.
Attention Now
Why all this dwelling on death? Does Kabir just have a morbid streak—an
attraction to death? Some would say yes. In a well-known song, a woman
rejoices at her upcoming marriage to Ram.25 This has been interpreted as
meaning that death is a desirable consummation in which the devotee-bride

is finally united with her true husband, God.
I don’t think Kabir is promoting death, and I wouldn’t tag him as
“pessimistic.” This idea reminds me of the many times I’ve heard
Buddhism described as a pessimistic religion, because the first of the
Buddha’s four noble truths states that life is permeated with suffering.
The people who call him a pessimist fail to read down to the third noble
truth, which states that there is a way out of suffering. The fourth truth
presents the path.
The dark presence of death illuminates the preciousness of life. Is that
too obvious? In a basic sense, Kabir’s solution to the human problem is
very obvious. It is sahaj—simple, natural, immediate. Sahaj is the nature
of the awakened state. This is impossible for the complicated mind to
grasp. On countless occasions, with many little variations, Kabir says:
ab kā dhyān karo mere bhāī, yoṇ avsar nahīṇ āī
Pay attention now, brother.

This chance won’t come again.
The word ab, “now,” means the present moment, and dhyān means both
“attention” and “meditation”; so the first half-line could also be translated
as “meditate on/in the present moment.” This line comes at the end of a
song whose refrain repeats, “You didn’t follow the guru’s teaching, so the
deer have eaten your field.” Deer (or birds) eating one’s field: again death.
Kumar Gandharva sings a Gorakhnath bhajan whose refrain expresses
fear of death:
Guruji, I’m afraid of that day,

the day, the hour, the very moment. (Hess 2009a, 112)
Then there are four stanzas, all of which begin with “In this body.” The
first two show familiar images of death: a garden where a deer grazes, a
clay pot that easily breaks. The third compares the body to a busy mar-
ket, then says, “Do your business in this very moment,” leading into the
final verse:
In this body, Gorakh the ascetic says,

today is the day of bliss.
184 Bodies of Song
Could our spiritual problem simply be a matter of procrastination?
kāl kare so āj kar, āj kare so ab

pal meṇ pralaya hoegī, bahurī karegā kab
Tomorrow’s job? Do it today. Today’s job? Do it now.

In a second the world will end. When will you do the job?
Before leaving the theme of “now,” we will look at the texts of two full
bhajans.
Seeker, there’s something

you’re supposed to do.
So do it!
This life is a jewel, hard to find.
You’ve wandered through eight million
four hundred thousand births. There’s someone
you’re supposed to meet.
So meet!
You tried mantras, prayers, fasts, deprivation,

you ran through the six philosophical schools,
but never found wisdom beyond wisdom.
You just distracted yourself.
A voice says Vishnu’s in Vaikunth,

another says he’s in Cow Heaven,
someone else says Sahib’s in Shiva’s city.
For ages, they’ve marketed these products.
An ignorant person says God’s far away.

Someone who knows says God is close.
A true guru gives this precious hint:
The path to God’s in every breath.
The guru’s whole mind is revealed.

Someone recites a wordless word.
Bananath says, listen friend:
my true guru’s voice
is shouting at you.
(Bhajan: karnā re hoy)
It’s very close, so why are you searching? Where are you running? Bird,
why fly from forest to forest? We have met this motif before. It belongs to
the section on the body, because “now” equals “here,” and “here” is in our
own bodies. It belongs to the section on social criticism, because the absolute
equality of bodies guts the ideology of purity and pollution, while the vision of
the living body as containing the light, the sound, the breath of truth declares
the independence and dignity of all who have been oppressed and excluded.
Insistence on the body is crucial; merely declaring equality of souls (separate
from bodies) permits social and economic hierarchies to roll merrily along.
Now I’m starting to run with political thoughts and forgetting the
main point of this section. There will be much more to discuss about
political Kabir, but not here. Here we’re trying to stick with something
simple, sahaj. For instance, Kabir’s formula jaisā kā taisā, or jyūṇ kā tyūṇ.
It’s one of those rhyming, doubling Hindi phrases that are hard to trans-
late; we could say it means “just like this, just like that.” Not different.
Not elsewhere. It usually comes at the end of a song. The first chapter
gives a translation of the song Tū kā tū, “You, only you,” which celebrates
the presence of the ultimate reality in everything. The last lines say:
jal thal jiv meṇ tū hī virāje, jahāṇ dekhu vahāṇ tū kā tū

kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādho guru milyā hai jyoṇ kā tyoṇ
In earth, ocean, every creature, you shine forth, only you.

Wherever I look, it’s only you.
you’ve found the guru, exactly here!
The famous Jhīnī chadariyā, “Subtle cloth,” translated in this chapter,

concludes:
dās kabīr jatan se oḍhe jyoṇ kī tyoṇ dhar dīnī chadariyā

Kabir wrapped the cloth with care and kept it just exactly as it was.
A song that will be discussed in the next chapter ends this way:
jo tere ghaṭ meṇ jo mere ghaṭ men, sab ke ghaṭ me ek hai bhāī
kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādho, har jaisā kā taisā
In your body, my body, every body, friend, it’s one.
Kabir says, listen seekers: in each, just exactly that.
186 Bodies of Song
Prahladji once explained jyūṇ kā tyūṇ as evoking an untouched simple

(sahaj) state. He said it may be used in a situation where a storm or earth-
quake strikes, but when it’s over you find a tree or building standing jyūṇ
kā tyūṇ, as it was, where it was. Then he said that a true guru is one who
makes you return to a condition of jyūṇ kā tyūṇ or jaisā kā taisā—before all
the conditioning of human existence intervened.
The return to the present moment that we’ve seen in earthy, everyday
images also comes in the last stanza of a song in strange, ungraspable
nirguṇ language:
Nowhere, go there,
swan, go there,
nowhere.
Return, stay there,
nowhere.
You’ll have no fear
of birth and death.
That one has no sect, no twelve branches,26

no ground to stand on.
You can’t say its name out loud
or silently, so whose name
are you trying to remember,
swan?
Without ground, the waterwheel turns,

without cloud, without water,
without a vessel nectar pours,
so drink that nectar,
swan.
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, those gods

come and go. That syllable
isn’t long or short,
that’s the word
you should repeat,
swan.
What’s gone will not come back,

so live this moment now.
Kabir says listen, seeker,

build your house
in that country,
swan.
Nowhere, go there,
swan, go there,
nowhere.
Return, stay there,
nowhere.
You’ll have no fear
of birth and death.27
That Country
There is a country, a deśh, that constantly shows up in the Kabir songs of
Malwa, though I didn’t encounter it when I was farther north and east, in
Varanasi, studying the Bījak.28 The deśh may be a theme that belongs to
Rajasthan and its border areas, as it appears often in Rajasthani songs as
well. Or it may be related to the mythology of nirguṇ sects like Radhasoami
and the Dharamdasi Kabir Panth, which have elaborate descriptions of
realms beyond this world where the spiritual traveler goes.
The deśh is a marvelous place, a place where we really belong and that
belongs to us, though it is strange by normal standards. One song devoted
mainly to satirical commentary repeatedly invokes the deśh in the refrain:
Why have you forgotten your country, you crazy?

Why have you forgotten your own country?
The deluded gardener tears off a leaf.

In every leaf is life!
She tears a leaf, gives it to a [stone] god.
That god has no life, you crazy!
Why have you forgotten your country?
We have met the theme of the pardesī, the foreigner. The song that
brought forth Prahladji’s tears in Bhopal comments ruefully on the unreli-
ability of everyone with whom we might think of forging a solid bond: they’re
all foreigners, bound to leave this place as suddenly as they came. In another
188 Bodies of Song
angle on the pardesī, the speaker declares himself a foreigner who belongs
somewhere else. I first heard “I’m a bird from another country” on an old,
privately recorded cassette of the great classical singer Kumar Gandharva.
It haunted me even before I understood the words. Later I found out that
Kumarji lived in Malwa and learned many Kabir bhajans from wandering
yogis and ordinary rural people. When I heard Prahladji’s version of the
song, the words and melody were similar though not identical.
I’m a bird from another country, baba,

I don’t belong to this country.
The people in this country are unconscious,
every moment sunk in regret,
brothers, seekers, I don’t belong
to this country.
I sing without a mouth

walk without feet
fly without wings.
Awareness free
of illusion, I play
in the limitless.
Sitting in the shade, I burn.

In the sun, I’m cool.
My true guru is beyond
sun or shade.
I dwell in the guru.
I’m a bird from another country, baba,

I don’t belong to this country.
As reported in chapter 1, while organizing the first U.S. tour of the

Malwa singers in 2003, I took inspiration from the repeated refrain of one
of their bhajans:
chalo hamārā des / Come to my country.
Songs that talk about the deśh often address the helī—a dear, intimate,
female friend. Helī songs constitute another genre that could have had its
own section. The epicenter of this genre is Rajasthan, where such songs are
numerous; I encountered no helī texts during my early work on Kabir in
Uttar Pradesh.29 Helī songs are characterized by the frequent cry of address,
mhārī helī!—my dear friend! The cry is energetic, often high-pitched, with
the last syllable sustained on a long note. It punctuates the song, making
the communication more immediate, emotional, and dramatic.
The following song stays with the theme of that deśh all the way, sus-
taining a subtle tension between the concrete quality of “country” and the
no-quality of nirguṇ, shūnya (empty), nyārā (beyond/ other). It is about an
experience that happens in the body; we know this because of the yogic
language. While in the body, it also dissolves the body’s boundaries.
My country is like this.

Touch the innermost secret and see.
Veda and Quran can’t reach the border,

it’s utterly beyond speaking and listening.
Above the eight lotuses and ten doors
that one lives.
Without clouds, thunder crashes.

Without sun, brilliance flashes.
Without eyes, string your beads.
Pronounce the word.
In the palace of emptiness an instrument plays—

vina, flute, sitar.
One who climbs to the cave in the sky
sees the boundless, the pathless.
A water-drop falls into water,

not salty, not sweet.
Kabir says, listen friends, seekers,
Someone dear to the guru will get there.

Touch the innermost secret and see.30
Not only “empty” and “other,” that country is mad—divānā. “Madness”

here has the ambiguity it also has in other languages. One can be mad
190 Bodies of Song
with love; one can be mad because one’s experiences and views of the
world are so wildly different from the norm.
It’s with you but you can’t find it.

Someone who knows the guru, someone wise, understands.
Oh seekers, friends,
that country is mad.
I don’t go to holy places, don’t recite the name,

don’t practice asceticism or meditation.
Just as I am, I play in the world. No special image or place.
that country is mad

I walk the path without feet, see without eyes,
without ears hear a flute, without nose smell fragrance,
without tongue taste the essence.
that country is mad

On the lake of simplicity, the swan remembers.
It flies without wings. It pecks up pearls on the bank
of Mansarovar, a well of pure water.
that country is mad.31
The City of Love

One of Kabir’s most universally cited couplets proclaims love as a kind of
ultimate mantra:
pothī paḍh paḍh jag muā, panḍit bhayā nā koī

ḍhāī akśhar prem kā, paḍhe so panḍit hoī
They all read piles of books, then died.

None became wise.
Read four letters: love.
Wisdom is yours.
It’s surprising. That austere Kabir, the one who keeps drawing pic-
tures of death, who takes us to obscure verbal realms where the subject
is beyond words, and who is more than a little skeptical of family ties,
also likes to sing with full, rich feeling about love. What is the nature of
this love?
In one of our musical sessions in Bangalore before breakfast, Shabnam
sang a string of sākhīs about love.
Love doesn’t grow in gardens,

love isn’t sold in shops.
One who lacks love is bound up
and heading for hell.
***
Everyone talks about love, love.
No one can recognize love.
This cage holds something that won’t diminish.
That’s called love.
***
A body not infused with love
might as well be a cremation ground.
Like a blacksmith’s bellows,
it breathes without life.
***
Try but you can’t hide love

when your body feels it rise.
If you don’t speak with the mouth
it makes you weep with the eyes.
***
Come into my eyes!

I’ll take you behind my lids,
won’t look at anyone else,
and won’t let you look away.
***
Make your eyes a room

Spread the bed of your pupil
192 Bodies of Song
Drop the curtain of your lids

Please your lord there.
***
You want to taste the juice of love
and keep your pride?
Two swords in one sheath.
Never heard of it!
***
Saying “you, you,” I became you.
No “I” is left in me.
Completely surrendered.
Wherever I look—you.
These led into one of our favorite songs:
Come along to the guru’s country,

the city of feeling,
the city of love.
The city of feeling, dear helī,
the city of love.
Like the young bud of a kachanār tree,

the craftsman has made this body wondrous,
made it wondrous, but with defects.
the city of love.
The moth’s color, golden like turmeric,

flies away at the hour of death,
the hour of death, dear helī, the hour of death.
the city of love.
Don’t be proud of your body,

the body’s a bag of skin,
a bag of skin, dear helī, with many defects.

the city of love.
Gulabi Das says, from singing these songs

my body has become good.
The body is good, dear helī, defects have melted away.
the city of love.
Love isn’t easy to understand within any culture or across the distance
between two individuals, let alone across cultures. Who knows if what I’m say-
ing about love in Kabir as represented in Malwi folk songs makes any sense?32
Kabir directs our attention and intention toward giving up possessive-
ness and facing death. The body is dust right now. Why cling to anything?
Kabir also shows the body right now as wondrous, revealing the wonder of
everything. Pay attention to this moment! It won’t come back. Once the leaf is
blown off the tree, how will they meet again? Sometimes in Kabir and related
nirguṇ poets, love is found in the unspeakable fragility of these tender, fleeting
relationships. Jājo jājo re, bhāī mhārā jājo is a song that conveys this feeling.
Go, go, my brother, go,

cross the ocean, bring back an unpierced pearl, oh seeker.
I found them, found jewels, thousands of them,

but the pearl of the heart I couldn’t find.
It has flown, flown away, the bird of the forest.

Where is the temple’s dweller now?
Embrace, embrace, my brother, embrace

with outstretched arms. Any moment, separated—when
will we meet?
It’s split, split, my brother, the milk of the heavenly cow

has split.
Once the milk splits, the curd will never come together.
It’s tied, tied up, my brother, tied in knots.

The string’s end has broken off, it can’t come loose.
He speaks, speaks, my brother, Dharu Prahlad speaks

to the seeker: meet, meet, forever keep on meeting.
194 Bodies of Song
Go, go, my brother, go,

cross the ocean, bring back an unpierced pearl, oh seeker.
In all the categories of this impromptu anthology, I could go on with

many examples. Like Prahladji in a performance, I am limited by time/
space. I conclude the “love” section, based on my knowledge and mood at
this moment, with Aisī mhārī prīt nibhāvajo—a song using imagery that
has been popular in Indian love poetry, both religious and secular, for
thousands of years, but concluding with the typical nirguṇ shift, locating
the beloved intimately within oneself.
Stay true to my love, oh Ram

Don’t leave me in this world-ocean
You are a tree, I am a vine

I’ll stay entwined around you
If you fall, I wither
What will become of me?
Don’t forget me in this world-ocean
You are an ocean, I am a fish

I’ll stay inside you
If you go dry, I die
You are a cloud, I am a peacock

I’ll stay entranced by you
If you thunder, I call out
(Alternate line: If you burst with rain, I sing to you)
Says Kabir to Dharamdas—

Your beloved dwells in your body
Your beloved makes your heart beat
Don’t forget me in this world-ocean
Drunken Joy
Out on a field one day, we met Kaluram Bamaniya and his group.33 It was
Shabnam’s first ride through the Malwa countryside. The men brought
special outfits, matching black vests to wear over their white kurtas,
bright red turbans that they put on as we watched, stretching the cloth
out twenty feet and helping each other to wrap it. They spread a sheet on
the ground and sat down with their instruments. Next to the sheet was
a pile of dry cornstalks. Our late arrival put a sinking sun behind them,
which subtly colored and softened the light. The soil was rosy brown.
After a couple of songs in medium tempo, Kaluram started a new refrain.
man lāgo mero yār fakīrī meṇ

This mind, my friend, has learned to love
owning nothing.
I had heard the words before but not the tune. It was fast and happy.
Trying to translate it, I run into problems. The refrain is short and
completely comprehensible to the Hindi audience. But what to do in
English with fakīrī? It is the state of being a fakīr—a renunciant who
possesses nothing and wanders carefree. Kabir commonly uses Hindu
words to signify a world-renouncer, but this word comes from Arabic
and is associated with Islam. Fakīr (which in Arabic originally means
“poor”) has a different feeling, conjures up a somewhat different visual
image and set of associations, from the Hindu-connected sādhu, yogī,
avadhūt. My translation can’t really convey the message that there is
something “Muslim” and “Sufi” about this word. Then the verb lāgo—so
common, short and simple, but with a range of meanings. Lagnā means
to become attached, involved, deeply engaged—usually in a positive way.
It’s omnipresent in Hindi, taking on various shades of meaning. There’s
no simple equivalent in English. Taking some poetic license, I have used
four words (“has learned to love”). Further, yār (from Persian) is more
intimate and informal than other common words for “friend.” In fact all
the key words—the rhyming fakīrī, amīrī, garībī, jāgīrī, sabūrī, magarūrī,
sarūrī—are from Perso-Arabic roots, which is unusual in the Kabir texts
I’m familiar with. Remember as you read that the refrain is repeated
after every stanza.
196 Bodies of Song
man lāgo mero yār fakīrī meṇ
jo sukh pāvogā rām bhajan meṇ, vo sukh nāhīṇ amīrī meṇ

hāth meṇ tumbā bagal meṇ soṭā, chāroṇ diśhā jāgīrī meṇ
bhalā bura sab kā sun līje, kar gujarān garībī meṇ
ākhir yeh tan khākh milegā, kyon phire magarūrī meṇ
kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādho, sāhib milegā sarurī [sabūrī] meṇ

owning nothing.
The happiness you get singing God’s name,

you won’t get that happiness from money.
A water-gourd in my hand, a stick to lean on,

my kingdom stretches in four directions.34
Listen to everyone, good and bad,

live at ease in poverty.
At last this body will meet with dust.

Why strut with pride?

you meet God
in joy.35
Man lāgo mero yār was rocking, lilting, upbeat. But Kaluram’s next offer-
ing took us even higher: Man mast huā phir kyā bole. Mast is an adjective
referring to a state of abandonment, a joy that fills you to the brim and
beyond, ecstatic, with no trace of agitation. It is defined in dictionaries
as supreme happiness, drunkenness, freedom from anxiety, unwavering
absorption. Man, translated as “mind” in the previous poem, also means
“heart.”
man mast huā phir kyā bole
halkī thī jab chaḍhī tarāju, pūrī bharī tab kyā tole
hīrā pāyo bāndh gaṭhariyā, bār bār vāko kyoṇ khole
haṃsa pāve mānsarovar, tāl talaīyā meṇ kyoṇ dole
surat kalālin bhayī matavālī madavā pī gayī anatole
kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādho, sāhib mil gayā til ole
The heart is overjoyed. What to say?
Something light can go on the scale.

When it overflows the tray, what to weigh?
You found a diamond, tied it in your scarf.
Why keep opening it to count your riches?
The swan has found Lake Mansarovar.
Why paddle around in ponds and ditches?
The wineseller, awareness, is drunk herself.
She goes on drinking wine, no end.
here’s God—in the pupil of your eye!36
The heart is overjoyed. What to say?
Kaluram is booming, grooving. Why speak? What to say? The two long,
open vowels in bole flow like rivers, quicksilver, up and down, swift and
free in their channels of melody, exuberant. Everyone in the manḍalī has
got the spirit. They’re smiling and their bodies thrum as they bring forth
music from instruments and voices. Our companion and guide Narayanji,
in a long yellow kurtā, jumps up and dances, twirling around and extend-
ing his arms in liquid movements. Shabnam kneels, one hand holding
the camera, the other spinning above her head, forefinger pointed in a
Punjabi-style dance move. The earth and sky are right with us.
Sometimes instead of drunkenness, we hear of madness—using
divānā, a special poetic word for “mad” that signifies the blessed madness
of love and joy:
Don’t mess with me!

I’m mad with the name, mad
with the song.
Stand away from me, friend,
get back, the knife
of truth is in my hand,
I’ll strike you!
Don’t anyone mess with me,
I’m mad with the name, mad
with the song.37
The theme of great joy occurs in Kabir performances and collections

everywhere. Joy flows, joy floods; so it brings forth imagery of liquids.38
198 Bodies of Song
Drink! A cascade of nectar pours from the sky.
One drop fills a thirsty person’s pot. You can’t even dream
of the taste! How to explain this, and to whom?
One drop takes you home.
You have to be thirsty to drink that water. That water

is only for the thirsty. No unfit person can know
this cascade of nectar, this great flow.
Drink the nectar, be deathless, forever free

from the cycles of birth, the rounds of pain.
The vessel of your body is filling. It’s full!
That drop of nectar is the guru’s word.

That water is the road of life.
Kabir has found the right companions.
Green leaves burst forth
on the branch of love.
Sometimes the drink is amṛit (nectar), sometimes ras (juice, liquid,

essence) or premras (the liquid of love). One popular song names a can-
nabis drink—bhāng—as the source of drunkenness.39
The great flow can be evoked as monsoon rain:
My true guru tells the secret, seekers, friends,

the complete guru reveals it, oh yes,
a boundless rain is pouring.
From the east rushes the eastern wind,

merging with waves in the west.
Whoosh-whoosh, the fountains are bursting,
the torrents of rain unceasing, friends.40
Or a marvelous root can yield its liquid essence:
A root of wisdom, the true guru gave me, he gave me

a root of wisdom. That root
was very dear to me, filled
with nectar.41
It is worth reprising briefly here the story, told in chapter 2, of

Prahladji’s visit with Chenamaru a very old man who was the first to
teach him bhajans. Shabnam captures the scene poignantly in film. The
old bhajan-guru looks thin and frail. His cheeks sprout grey stubble,
and his eyes don’t seem to focus well. But he is smiling and pleased at
the visit. After some reminiscing, Prahladji tries to get him to sing. He
protests: “Oh no, I can’t do that anymore, don’t trouble me.” All smiles,
Prahladji says, “Aren’t I here with you? We’ll sing together.” Prahladji
starts a song that he learned from Chenamaru some thirty years before.
It tells of an imminent meeting with the guru, the sahib, the lord. In
that meeting all petty possessiveness will melt away, replaced by free-
dom. All boundaries will disappear. The images of this journey get
more mysterious toward the end. But the refrain simply announces
drunkenness, nashā:
I’m on my way
to meet the true guru, on my way
to meet the lord.
about to meet the lord.42
Though he had protested that he didn’t have the energy to sing

any more, during this song and one that followed—also about
drunkenness—Chenaji’s eyes lit up and he sang along with gusto. One
month later he passed away.
No Ending, Just Stopping

Oral traditions, unlike critical editions, don’t end. The listener just steps
away, knowing that the singing and weaving of texts will go on whether
she is there or not. We conclude with a few passages from my field notes
in 2011 and 2012.
At this point there are probably 100 Kabir songs from Malwa that
I “know”—meaning that they call forth a smile of recognition from
me when they are sung. These are, perhaps, a fair representation of
popular Malwa Kabir in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
It is startling to run down the contents of a scholarly collection of
200 Bodies of Song
Kabir poems and to find none of them. A new singer in a new vil-
lage is sure to come up with many songs that I don’t recognize. Why
should I be surprised? Prahladji has at least ten notebooks in which
he’s been writing since 1977. Almost every page is filled on both
sides with handwritten texts. When Eklavya documented the Kabir
traditions of the region in the 1990s, they collected such notebooks
from many singers, photocopying the contents. They counted about
1500 distinct song texts. (Eklavya 1999)
***
PT has been singing out of the ancient-looking copybooks. One

morning I find him copying from a tattered discolored sheet of
paper from which the words are disappearing. Other mornings he
just takes something, seemingly at random, and the song opens an
unbelievable little world that becomes at moments a very big world,
through specific, concrete, local images. He explains to me the oper-
ation of an old-style still with which Adivasi (tribal) people made
liquor. He gives a technical description including two clay pots and
pipes and heat in the first pot and eventual rising and condensing
of the distilled liquor in the second pot. People who like to say Kabir
simply reproduced Advaita Vedanta philosophy in charming ver-
nacular language so that common people could receive it according
to their capacities need to understand this. Shankara never gave us
an Adivasi distillery. They need to understand the power and beauty
of the poetry that arises from people’s everyday lives, that totally
pervades Kabir and Bhavani Nath and other locally known poets
whose names keep cropping up as I sit with someone who knows so
much. The distillery is only a token of the incalculable richness of
this world of language and experience.43 PT tells me that the people
who dictated these songs to him long ago were completely illiterate,
but they had tremendous knowledge. They are gone now.
***
Narayanji, Kaluram, and Ajay have been doing research for the
Kabir Project. One task is to find manḍalīs led by old men and to
record what they sing. We went to visit one such group in the vil-
lage of Chaubaradhira. The leader was the only really old one—the
others appeared to be in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Asked his age, the
leader said 70–75. Ajay said: “The last time we were here you said
80–85.” The man said something equivalent to “whatever,” and
added, “How am I supposed to know my exact age?” He looked
closer to 80 than 70 to me. He spoke with clarity and sang with
energy. Though Narayanji is 67, steeped in Kabir singing for forty
years, and incredibly knowledgeable, he reported that they sang
songs he had never heard before, and some songs were in musical
styles unfamiliar to him.
***
In June 2011, Shabnam asked Prahladji and team to come to

Bangalore for a three-day retreat. They went to a quiet place,
with two co-workers, Smriti and Aarthi, operating video cameras.
Prahladji’s assignment was to sing bhajans that Shabnam had
never heard before. Seventy-five songs were recorded. They com-
promised on the ground rule, since Shabnam decided to record
some songs she already knew. But about fifty were new to her.
And he could have produced many more. Not long after, when
I’m with him in the village, I sense the influence of that three-day
retreat. Our little informal singing sessions include many songs
that are totally new to me (meaning that they are really old for
him). Even the young girls at Siya village, whom Narayanji and
Kaluram have been teaching, produced surprising things, like
one bhajan that mingled the names of Kabir, Mira, and Tulsi, and
another that concluded, “Kabir says to black Keshav . . . .” There
is simply no end to the number and variety of songs in Kabir oral
tradition.
“You Won’t Get That Happiness from Money . . .”

We began the last section of songs, “Drunken Joy,” with two bhajans that
speak of supreme happiness. They reject attachment to wealth and posses-
sions. One line even exhorts the listener to relax and enjoy poverty. It so
happens that most of the people who join Kabir manḍalīs in rural Malwa
are fairly poor. They have little land; most don’t have steady jobs; and their
caste status has made them subject to oppression and exploitation. In the
session described above, Kaluram and his group first sang a song about
202 Bodies of Song
patience, contentment, comfort in poverty, and freedom in nonposses-

sion; they followed with a song about inner joy, fullness beyond words or
measure. An observer might wonder: Are they escaping from their eco-
nomic and social limitations by singing such songs? Are they flying to a
fantasy land where poverty is a happy thing instead of a miserable thing?
These are questions that we will explore in chapters 6 and 8.
5
Oral Tradition in the

Twenty-First Century
Exploring Theory
Sound is not what one should desire to understand.

One should know the hearer.
Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad 3.8
Studying oral tradition at this historical moment has taken me

where I didn’t expect to go: into media and communication, technology
and neuroscience. Though I did not initially intend to write a chapter on
theories of orality, I thought it would be wise to take a look at the schol-
arship on oral traditions. Starting innocently by reviewing the history of
orality theory in the last fifty years, I soon understood that there is no
such thing as orality plain and simple. This was the end of innocence.
Now what? Should I abandon my project, which had “oral traditions” in
the title? Should I abandon the very idea of orality, as recommended by
Jonathan Sterne, a brilliant scholar in the growing field of “sound stud-
ies”? (More on him below.) Could I develop a smarter concept of orality
that would not have to negate everything the twentieth-century orality
scholars wrote and that would still escape the bruising critique of Sterne?
This chapter is a nod to a field that is too big for me to embrace but
too important for me to ignore. It is strikingly different from the rest of
the book, which is grounded in ethnographic and textual study of Kabir
in specific places and times. Here, Kabir will rarely be mentioned. I have
persisted in writing the chapter because of a central question that textual
and ethnographic study can hint at but cannot address directly. That ques-
tion is: What is the difference in our experience when we receive or per-
form Kabir orally, as compared to when we read Kabir or receive the poetry
through other media? How are we alive in different ways?
204 Bodies of Song
Chapter 2 examined what happens to texts in an oral-performative

world, and what happens to our understanding of texts when we perceive
them as existing in that world. The present chapter considers what hap-
pens to people in oral-performative milieus. What goes on in our bodies
and minds, our ways of thinking, feeling, and remembering? Can we
make a distinction between the experience of a written text and the experi-
ence of a musical text that is sung in live performance? Can we also distin-
guish the oral-performative from other ways of receiving information that
have recently rushed into common experience—audio, video, internet,
hypertext, virtual reality? Clearly these questions tax my competence. This
chapter is a layperson’s exploration. At times I may sound like a cheer-
leader for the oral, or a grumpy complainer about the digital. Such is not
my intention, but it is a built-in hazard as I try to trace out what makes the
oral-performative a particular and valuable mode of experience.
To explore these matters, we will wend our way through the following:
(1) Theories of orality, literacy, and media that flourished in the latter half
of the twentieth century.
(2) Challenges in the last twenty years to those ideas about orality and
literacy.
(3) The concept of “secondary orality,” which proposes that electronic
media in general and the internet in particular are similar to oral tra-
dition, and that oral tradition and the internet differ in similar ways
from print media.
(4) The recent efflorescence of neuroscientific research in the study of
media, perception, and cognition.
I will argue that, although there is no pure orality or literacy anywhere,

it is still possible to think about oral-performative modes and to study them
as distinct from literary and other media. A parallel argument (related to
“orality” discourses of the twentieth century) is that, although there is no
pure and independent function of the senses, there are still differences
among hearing, seeing, and other modes of sense perception, and we can
discuss those differences. To test this immediately, look at a tree when
the wind is blowing. You perceive the tree through colors, shapes, visible
motions, and so on. Close your eyes and listen. You perceive the sounds
of wind, the sounds made by leaves and branches as they move, birds in
the tree, and so on. Your perception of the tree is primarily visual the first
time, aural the second. You could do the same with tactile sensation. What
Oral Tradition: Exploring Theory 205
the tree becomes in each case is quite different. How your body and mind
are functioning in each case is different. To grant that they are different is
easy. To state the nature and significance of the difference is hard.
I will argue further that music has a transformative effect on how
we receive and understand text. That is an obvious fact, observed in this
humanities-based book through evocative descriptions of and conversa-
tions about Kabir music. The scientific ways of substantiating this fact are
not obvious. I simply hint at scientific explorations here. The point is to
include music as an essential aspect of the oral-performative difference in
the Kabir cultures we have been studying.
Finally I will argue that live, embodied presence is key to the
oral-performative difference. This argument points both to the individual
body-mind experience when people are in direct physical proximity to
each other and to the larger dynamics of social interaction.1
My conclusion: It is the combination of sound, music, physical pres-
ence, and social interaction that produces a distinct oral-performative
experience in the Kabir culture of North India.
Orality Studies from the Mid-Twentieth Century

When I started graduate school in comparative literature in 1970, I was
immediately made to read Albert Lord’s 1960 work The Singer of Tales and
given those linked names, Parry and Lord, a pair of brave new stars to fix
in the firmament of literary methodology.2 In the 1930s, Harvard profes-
sor Milman Parry had discovered relatively “pure” living traditions of oral
epic in Yugoslavia. His student Albert Lord had used and expanded Parry’s
data collection to theorize oral composition and draw lines of demarcation
between written and oral poetic narratives, emphasizing the significance
of the work to Homeric studies. This produced a great shaking at its comp
lit and classics epicenter. Comp lit students in those days had an origin
myth: “In the beginning was Homer.” Soon the seismic waves spread out-
ward. It was fascinating to think about orality—an utterly different frame
of mind, one might even say a different brain—in singers, listeners, poets,
cultures. It made us suddenly reflect on what had previously been uncon-
scious: our own inescapable, all-encompassing literacy; our unquestioned
assumption that books and writing were the natural and indispensable
ways of producing and transmitting knowledge; and our obliviousness as
to how that affected the way our minds operated.
206 Bodies of Song
Many scholars took up orality, literacy, and media from 1960 on.
Among the best known are Marshall McLuhan, Eric Havelock, Walter
Ong, Jack Goody, Ruth Finnegan, and John Miles Foley; many more could
be named.3 Writing a book in the 2000s with “oral traditions” in the title,
naturally I needed to review this half-century of theory and fieldwork.
Because of the moment in media history in which I found myself, the
journey took on strange dimensions. Sometimes it felt like going through
the looking glass.
There is no world of purely oral text production and reception as there
seemed to be, briefly, when Milman Parry came into contact with epic
singers in Yugoslavia in 1933. Here we confront a slippage in orality stud-
ies that is crucial to our present consideration of them. After Parry and
Lord, it became common to imagine an absolute distinction between oral
and literary milieus. In The Singer of Tales, Lord contends that “the two
techniques are . . . contradictory and mutually exclusive. Once the oral
technique is lost, it is never regained. . . . It is conceivable that a man might
be an oral poet in his younger years and a written poet later in life, but it
is not possible that he be both an oral and a written poet at any given time
in his career. The two by their very nature are mutually exclusive” (Lord
1960, 129). Twenty-six years later, he remains firm on the separation: “Let
there be no doubt on this question . . . oral traditional literature without a
clear distinction between it and ‘written literature’ ceases to exist” (Lord
1986, 468).
As long as he is talking about singers who compose orally, Lord’s argu-
ment makes some sense. The process of composition does change when
singers begin to read and write the material that they perform. But here is
the slippage that caused so much trouble later: from talking about a pro-
cess of composition, scholars began to generalize about “cultures.” Some
cultures, they proposed, are oral, and others are literate. We can describe
the essential characteristics of these two types of culture, no matter where
they are in space and time, no matter what other factors are in play. This
essentializing through much of the twentieth century dovetailed with a
colonial mentality that infected the thinking of most Euro-Americans. The
colonially inflected way of framing cultures tended to align oral with prim-
itive, literate with civilized.
Ruth Finnegan and John Miles Foley, whose many works on orality
extend from the 1970s to the present, reject the sharp distinction between
oral and literate worlds. Finnegan criticizes what she calls the romantic
theory of orality that insists on “ ‘pure’ oral tradition, uncontaminated by
influence or interference from written or printed forms.” She traces this

theory back to the early nineteenth century but finds it to be still popu-
lar among scholars in the late twentieth century. Finnegan herself takes a
lively interest in the interactions of oral and written forms and the inter-
play of aesthetic, commercial, recreational, and political forces in answer-
ing the question, “How do oral poems reach their audiences?” (Finnegan
1977, 140–41). She unequivocally rejects the notion of essentially oral and
literary cultures:
They shade into each other both in the present and over many cen-
turies of historical development, and there are innumerable cases
of poetry which has both “oral” and “written” elements. The idea of
pure and uncontaminated “oral culture” as the primary reference
point for the discussion of oral poetry is a myth. (Finnegan 1977, 24)
Foley similarly dismisses the airtight categories some of the founding

gurus proposed: “If research over the past quarter-century has shown any-
thing, it’s that the so-called Great Divide of orality versus literacy amounts
to an illusion that has outlived its usefulness.”4
If the Great Divide is an illusion, then what is oral about “oral Kabir”?
If oral, written, and diversely recorded texts are not separate but inter-
acting, in what ways is it meaningful to talk about a category called
“oral-performative”? Along with writing and print, how do we factor in
other ways of freezing text—records, cassettes, CDs, video? While we are
thinking about this (and emailing, youtubing, and smartphoning about it),
something more vast and confounding opens up. Mediascapes are chang-
ing with stunning rapidity around us and within us. Whatever we were
saying about the normativity of printed texts is interrupted by the flood
of e-books inundating the market and shocking the publishing industry,
promising to end the long era of paper-based reading.5 Internet habits dis-
rupt whatever we used to do when we read. Hypertext blows away prac-
tices of attention and coherence. We reach portals where signs say, in their
own ways, “Eat me,” “Drink me.” But instead of a cup or a plate, we get a
microprocessor. The rabbit-holes of media are electronically produced. We
are tumbling down, over, and up even as we write about media. We can
hardly keep track of what is “physical” in the old-fashioned sense and what
is produced by electronic stimulation of our neural networks.
Where did I read Foley’s statement, quoted above, on the “Great Divide”?
Not in any book or journal, but on his website, www.pathwaysproject.org.
208 Bodies of Song
Who knows if that sentence, accessed in July 2009, is still “there” as I

complete this book, or as you read it? (“There” means an infinite virtual
space currently known as “the cloud.”) For decades a prominent scholar of
oral traditions, Foley has taken what he sees as the next step in building a
website to argue and demonstrate that oral tradition and the internet are
similar, while both are in striking contrast with written texts:
The major purpose of the Pathways Project is to illustrate and

explain the fundamental similarities and correspondences between
humankind’s oldest and newest thought-technologies: oral tradi-
tion and the Internet.
Despite superficial differences, both technologies are radically
alike in depending not on static products but rather on continuous
processes, not on “What?” but on “How do I get there?” In con-
trast to the fixed spatial organization of the page and book, the tech-
nologies of oral tradition and the Internet mime the way we think
by processing along pathways within a network. In both media it’s
pathways—not things—that matter.6
Foley’s thesis was anticipated by Walter Ong some thirty years prior
to the Pathways website, and by Marshall McLuhan before that. The
Gutenberg Galaxy was prescient in many of its observations about media.
On his first page, McLuhan says: “Any technology tends to create a new
human environment. . . . Technological environments are not merely pas-
sive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and
other technologies alike” (1962, unnumbered page). He points to script
and papyrus, stirrup and wheel, and “the sudden shift from the mechani-
cal technology of the wheel to the technologies of electric circuitry.” One
of the effects of printing with movable type, he suggests, was that “it cre-
ated the PUBLIC.” Print, unlike manuscripts, had the power to create a
national public and was thus indispensable to the rise of nation-states.
Electric circuitry, he suggests, signals the demise of nations: “What we
have called ‘nations’ in recent centuries did not, and could not, precede
the advent of Gutenberg technology any more than they can survive the
advent of electric circuitry with its power of totally involving all people in
all other people” (ibid.).7
McLuhan referenced radio, television, and primitive computers as
“electric circuitry.” Digital technology and the internet have propelled us
much farther beyond print than he was able to witness, though he foresaw
the direction: “Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we

have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abol-
ishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”8 As a website
on the history of the internet puts it, McLuhan “made the concept of a
global village, interconnected by an electronic nervous system, part of our
popular culture well before it actually happened.”9
Parry and Lord did minute and illuminating work on the characteris-
tics of oral composition and performance, based on fieldwork in particu-
lar cultures. They observed how oral poets weave texts together by using
formulas, themes, meters, rhythms, and repetitive structures. These con-
ventions make possible great feats of memory and formal mastery while
still allowing for individual creativity and unpredictability. Many of the
same conventions operate in oral transmission of Kabir poetry, as seen
in c hapter 2 and elsewhere in this book. Along with these similarities,
there are significant differences between oral epics and Kabir songs. Epics
are long narratives. Songs are based on short poems. Aesthetically and
emotionally, they function quite differently. They command attention in
different ways. But formally they have much in common, and students of
bhakti song performance in South Asia can benefit from the fine-grained
observations of Lord and subsequent fieldworkers on oral poetic narrative.
I will return to Foley’s “pathways” website later in the chapter, in a sec-
tion on the internet and the notion of secondary orality.
Media Transitions
Historians since the mid-twentieth century have tracked transitional
moments in media and their wider contexts: the rise of manuscript
culture in medieval Europe; the emergence of the printing press; the
interactions of manuscripts and books with traditional oral modes of
discourse; the effects of print and print capitalism; audio and video
recording; and the leap into the age of the internet and virtual real-
ity (to name a few highlights). During periods of transition from one
technological era to another, we begin to notice something big going
on. McLuhan and Ong talk about a long historical process of interior-
izing a new technology. At first, when it is novel, it may be seen as
either appealing or appalling. In its full sway, we don’t even notice it.
Print and the all-consuming power of the written word were taken for
granted as natural and inevitable in the twentieth century. Even in the
210 Bodies of Song
early twenty-first, those of us who lived most of our adult lives in the
previous century can’t quite see through our models of literacy, though
everything is changing.
[W]‌hen some previously opaque area becomes translucent, it is

because we have moved into another phase from which we can con-
template the contours of the preceding situation with ease and clar-
ity. It is this fact that makes it feasible to write The Gutenberg Galaxy
at all. As we experience the new electronic and organic age with ever
stronger indications of its main outlines, the preceding mechanical
age becomes quite intelligible. (McLuhan 1962, 275)
The mind conditioned to print, or to any other primary medium of

communication, comes to take that medium, its conventions and assump-
tions, for granted. McLuhan cites H. L. Chaytor’s 1945 book From Script to
Print, which he credits with inspiring The Gutenberg Galaxy.
[T]‌he result of the fusion [of sound and sight, speech and print] is
that once it is achieved in our early years, we . . . cannot think of
sounds without thinking of letters; we believe letters have sounds.
We think that the printed page is a picture of what we say, and that
the mysterious thing called ‘spelling’ is sacred. . . . The invention of
printing broadcast the printed language and gave to print a degree
of authority that it has never lost. . . . So also when we speak or write,
ideas evoke acoustic combined with kinesthetic images, which are
at once transformed into visual word images. The speaker or writer
can now hardly conceive of language, except in printed or written
form; the reflex actions by which the process of reading or writing
is performed have become so ‘instinctive’ and are performed with
such facile rapidity, that the change from the auditory to the visual
is concealed from the reader or writer.10
This hegemony of print has held sway among the world’s formally
educated classes over a period that roughly coincides with that of the
great Euro-American empires and the rise of nation-states—the sixteenth
through twentieth centuries. Along with most of my readers, I am perme-
ated through and through with its effects. Our brains are shaped by it. We
automatically filter language and knowledge through this taken-for-granted
technology.
In the early twenty-first century we are experiencing another epochal

transformation in communication media, and therefore in our brains. The
demise of the book is widely trumpeted, and the brain-shapes of those who
live in perpetual connectivity—the branching, spinning, virtual dimen-
sions of the web—are under scrutiny. Is the book really dead? Is the hege-
mony of print over? I don’t know. Even as I reflect on orality and print, the
explosions of the new mediascape dazzle my real and virtual eyes.
Media affect what we perceive, how we think, and how we organize
our knowledge. I have defined “oral-performative Kabir” as referring to
live, body-to-body transmission, where sounds produced by voices and
instruments reach ears located in the same physical vicinity. A poten-
tial objection to this definition is voiced by Philip Auslander, who, in his
book Liveness, warns against artificially separating live from mediatized
performance—a move often correlated with a higher valuation of what is
live. In his introduction, after discussing how television originally mod-
eled itself on a live form (theater) and more recently how live events have
modeled themselves on mediatized representations, Auslander says:
I . . . turn to the way in which the issue of live performance is treated

in contemporary performance theory and challenge its grounding
of the distinction . . . in ostensible ontological differences between
live and mediatized forms. Against that formulation, I argue that
the relationship between live and mediatized forms and the mean-
ing of liveness be understood as historical and contingent rather
than determined by immutable differences. To conclude . . . I exam-
ine several of the conventional explanations for why people value
live performance and offer a suggestion of how liveness is being
redefined for the digital age. (Auslander 2008 [1999], 7–8)
There is always some arbitrariness in imposing categories on real life.

I define oral performance as live body-to-body communication in order
to examine the consequences of experiencing Kabir in that distinct way.
That doesn’t mean I am claiming an ontological difference between live
and mediatized, or denying that the relationship between them is also his-
torical and contingent. Historicity and contingency must enter the pic-
ture when we study, for example, the fate of texts (as in c hapters 2 and 4,
which focus on texts). When we study the experience of people in trans-
mitting and receiving texts, it is acceptable to limit the range of situations
we wish to examine. Even when I specify the situation narrowly in terms
212 Bodies of Song
of live communication, where the bodies are physically close enough for
the listener to hear the performer’s voice directly, there is a technological
gray area. What if they are using microphones? I include amplified perfor-
mance in my category of live oral performance, though this is admittedly
a slightly “mediatized” event and shows that the boundary is not absolute.
Reflecting on our own experience, we notice certain characteristics
of oral and written modes of communication.11 Oral performances are
unrepeatable events in time and involve physical proximity of performers
and audiences. They entail a certain fluidity of text, a certain unpredict-
ability of content and interaction. Printed texts are fixed, can be indi-
vidually owned and returned to, and are normally consumed privately.
Memory—particularly ability to remember text—tends to be stronger in
oral than in print-based situations. Orality implies sociality, which can be
dispensed with in consumption of print and other fixed portable media.
Audio and video recordings, which became common in the twentieth cen-
tury, are similar to print in that they offer fixed texts that can be bought,
sold, and consumed privately, though they are dissimilar in other ways.
These are the salient characteristics that come to mind most readily when
we try to distinguish oral-performative modes of transmission and recep-
tion from other modes.
But orality theorists in the twentieth century went further in describ-
ing the differences between “oral” and “literate,” positing a fundamental
difference between “eye and ear,” visual and aural experience. They gen-
eralized broadly, going from observations about eye and ear to theories
of perception, cognition, consciousness, social and cultural formations,
sometimes economic and political implications. McLuhan, for example,
dwells on changes wrought by the transition from ear to eye through print-
ing. The phonetic alphabet, he claims, thrusts the burden of learning and
communicating onto the eye more than any other sense organ. Hearing
exists in flowing time, reading in transfixed space. The fixed point of view
that becomes possible with print “depends on the isolation of the visual fac-
tor in experience.” Linear perspective, which developed in the Renaissance
simultaneously with printing, begins by establishing a fixed point of view.
The person who is speaking and listening, according to McLuhan, lives in
a more multisensory, kinesthetic field than one who is reading.
While they had many valuable insights, McLuhan, Ong, and other
orality-literacy theorists of their generation went to some very problem-
atic places that are easier to see now than they were in the mid-twenti-
eth century. Exaggerating the dichotomy between orality and literacy
they characterized “cultures” as being either oral or literate. Unaware of

their location in the lineage of colonial anthropology, they felt they could
describe the consciousness and social formations of an “oral culture”
wherever and whenever it might exist; this, not surprisingly, led to very
awkward ways of talking about “others.” McLuhan’s racist, exoticizing,
evolutionary views about nonliterate people and cultures are based on his
eager acceptance of an article by British psychiatrist J. C. Carothers, who
was in charge of a mental hospital near Nairobi from 1938 to 1950. In
the 1950s, Carothers wrote about “the African mind” in full-throated con-
currence with nineteenth-century colonial and evolutionary views on the
primitive and the civilized.
The history of twentieth-century theorizing about orality is beauti-
fully summarized in the opening chapter of Power and the Praise Poem:
Southern African Voices in History by Leroy Vail and Landeg White.12
Entitled “The Invention of ‘Oral Man’: Anthropology, Literary Theory,
and a Western Intellectual Tradition,” the chapter traces two streams
of theory about oral traditions, both issuing from the work of Milman
Parry and Albert Lord. One stream, including McLuhan, Havelock,
Goody, and Ong, posited an undifferentiated “oral man,” who coincided
roughly with the “primitive” of nineteenth-century colonial thought and
the “native” or “tribal” person conjured by anthropologists in the first
half of the twentieth. This person was magical, childlike, prelogical, in
touch with nature, emotionally active but socially suppressed, incapable
of developing as a unique individual. The part of the Parry-Lord theory
that they emphasized was the dominance of the formulaic, leading to
rigid convention and repetition:
[T]he often unconscious patterns of narrative and imagery are the

methods by which knowledge is preserved and transmitted in pre-
literate societies . . . . Citing Goody, [Ong] asserts that oral societies
are “characterized as homeostatic,” living “very much in a present
which keeps itself in equilibrium or homeostasis by sloughing off
memories which no longer have present relevance.” Ong’s oral
men worldwide are trapped in an endless cycle of repetition until,
one day, their history takes off with the invention or importation of
signs. . . . [H]is vision of oral communities locked into traditional-
ism by a determining orality is hopelessly at odds with the actual
history of southern Africa over the past two hundred years. (Vail and
White 1992, 24–25)
214 Bodies of Song
This view of oral literature also contrasts strikingly with Parry’s and
Lord’s emphasis on the creativity of the oral composer-performer: “As the
romantic title of Lord’s book, The Singer of Tales, indicates and as Parry
always insisted, the whole point of studying oral poetry is to understand
and appreciate the individual oral artist’s enviable genius” (Vail and White
1992, 25).
The second major stream of Parry-Lord-inspired research and theory
includes Ruth Finnegan and a succession of other scholars who have
worked in Africa.
[Their] emphasis upon the creativity of the oral performer . . . has

revolutionized the study of praise poetry and narratives, shifting
attention away from the stultifying realms of the “collective con-
sciousness” and the timeless “text” and toward the individual artist
and the act of creation. The oral poet or narrator is seen no lon-
ger as a mere “memorizer,” but as an artist, improvising brilliantly
within the formulas of his or her own tradition. These are attractive
arguments. Not only are they consistent with the obvious fact of
the historicity of oral literary traditions, but they also insist forcibly
on the nature of literature as literature, putting the creativity of the
performer at the center of our attention. (Vail and White 1992, 27)
But there is still a problem, traceable to Parry and Lord’s original ideas.
Though Parry focused very specifically on the southeastern European oral
epic poem, “there was always a tendency . . . to push beyond this narrow
focus . . . toward a universal theory of oral literature.”
. . . Lord, too, began with a narrow focus, but he has been similarly
imperial in his writing . . . What began as a hypothesis about the
making of Homeric verse has come, since the 1960s, to be applied,
first, to all oral poetry . . . and second, to all oral literature—praise
poems, songs, narratives, moralities, proverbs, tables, and riddles.
Oral literature as a worldwide phenomenon has come to be defined
as literature composed in performance through the manipulation
of formulas and formulaic expressions. . . . The link between the
separate “literatures” of the world came to lie in their common tech-
niques of composition, while criticism, in Ruth Finnegan’s words,
confined itself to the study of “detailed stylistic points and formulaic
systems leading to statistical conclusions.” (Vail and White 1992, 26)
In the last few decades studies of oral literature and performance in

Africa have become more sophisticated, turning away from Lord’s narrow
view of the functions of formulaic repetition and his rigid separation of
oral and literary, and embracing far more nuanced and grounded analysis
of the circumstances of performance and the dynamics of history.
Having received these indispensable lessons in nineteenth and twenti-
eth-century colonial/racist mindsets and their influence on orality theory,
I return to my original question. I would like to say something about the
difference in the experience of oral and written communication. Nearly all
Euro-Americans in the mid-twentieth century harbored far-reaching colo-
nial/racist viewpoints. I submit that it is not necessary to have such views
to imagine that human beings, in their various circumstances, have a dif-
ferent relationship to the sense-field and activate different neurophysio-
logical and cognitive processes when they are speaking and listening than
when they are reading.
From Orality Theory to Sound Studies

A chance meeting with Jonathan Sterne in 2011 introduced me to “sound
studies,” which has risen to prominence simultaneously with the explo-
sion of digital technology, virtual reality, new vistas in neuroscience, and
the convergence of neuroscience and media studies.
Sterne and others to whom his work has led me—on sound, media,
technology, the senses, and the brain—reject much of what twentieth-cen-
tury orality theorists said. He emphasizes these major problems:
(1) They posit an oral-literate dyad, treating the two as mutually exclusive.
This oversimplification leads them to essentialize absurdly, slapping
oral (“preliterate”) and literate onto a temporal template, implying
evolutionary progress, and privileging white European civilization.
Sterne demolishes “oral man”: “Anyone familiar with the distinctions
between, for example, Inuit and Zulu society would find the general-
ization of both as examples of ‘oral man’ as ‘laughably oversimplified’
(Sterne 2011, 220, citing Finnegan 1977, 259).
(2) T
hey separate the senses, assuming that the senses operate in distinct
ways that can be characterized, much as oral and literate cultures can
216 Bodies of Song
be characterized. This “sensorium” thinking, says Sterne, is “thin and

dated” (2011, 220).
The audiovisual litany [see below] renders the history of the

senses as a zero-sum game, where the dominance of one sense by
necessity leads to the decline of another sense. But there is no scien-
tific basis for asserting that the use of one sense atrophies another.
In addition to its specious reasoning, the audiovisual litany carries
with it a good deal of ideological baggage. (Sterne 2003,16)
As a concept of how the human brain works, the “sensorium”
was discredited in the late nineteenth century, as physiologists
learned there is no single centre of the brain that processes sensory
information (not even for individual senses, as it turns out). The
evidence for differences between oral and literate culture is based
on 50- to 100-year-old interpretations of textual sources. (Sterne
2011, 220)
Taking on the entire history of orality theory, Sterne recommends that

we discard the “aging fable” that casts its shadow on the received history
of communication.
The story of communication is staged as a play in three acts: oral-

ity, literacy, and electronic consciousness. To offer a gross sum-
mary: oral culture is a kind of auditory culture, structured by the
impossibility of writing anything down. It is ruled by tradition and
collectivity, and it dwells in an enduring present where the past is
maintained by feats of memory and memorization alone. Literate
culture is visual culture, structured by the dominance of visual
epistemologies such as the split between subject and object and the
ability to externalize memory and institutional form through the
power of writing and eventually print. It allows for greater bureau-
cratic control and consolidation and for highly orchestrated enter-
prises, such as science, that transcend time and space. Electronic
culture depends on the powers of externalization first developed
in literature culture, but it returns to a kind of oral mindset of
an expansive present and universal interconnectedness. (Sterne
2011, 208)
In his book The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction and
in a later article, “The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality,” which
thoroughly criticizes the theories of Walter Ong, Sterne proposes that a set
of long-accepted postulates are discredited by new knowledge and should
be finally retired. These principles he calls the “audiovisual litany”:
• hearing is spherical; vision is directional

• hearing immerses its subject; vision offers a perspective
• sounds come to us, but vision travels to its object
• hearing is concerned with interiors; vision is concerned with
surfaces
• hearing involves physical contact with the outside world; vision
requires distance from it
• hearing places you inside an event; seeing gives you a perspective
on the event
• hearing tends toward subjectivity; vision tends toward objectivity
• hearing brings us into the living world; sight moves us toward
atrophy and death
• hearing is about affect; vision is about intellect
• hearing is a primarily temporal sense; vision is a primarily
spatial sense
• hearing is a sense that immerses us in the world, while vision
removes us from it.
The audiovisual litany’s account of the differences between hear-

ing and seeing is rhetorically powerful, but not very accurate. As
Don Ihde (1974) has shown in his classic phenomenological study
of hearing, many of the aspects of auditory perception writers attri-
bute to the litany do not actually hold up when we closely exam-
ine auditory experience. Especially in recent years, anthropologists,
historians, and countless others have chronicled organizations of
sonic culture that call into question the assumptions about sound,
culture, and consciousness implied by the audiovisual litany. . . .
And yet, in the cultural theory and history that it subtends, the
oral-literate-electronic triad continues to exert a surprising degree
of influence over the ways in which many scholars characterize the
long history of communication in the West and how they differenti-
ate dominant Western constructs of communication from its many
Others. (Sterne 2011, 212–13)
218 Bodies of Song
Instead of the three-part narrative of orality, literacy, and electronic con-

sciousness, Sterne suggests more nuanced and wide-ranging observation
of communication technologies throughout human history:
What if the invention of writing and its stabilization in print were

not the single most important turning points in communication
history, but only one of many technological turning points? What if
scholars—whose lives’ work is dedicated to the written word—have
overestimated its world-historical importance? We want to believe
Plato that everything changed with writing. We are inclined to
imagine writing as the moment that consciousness first allowed
itself to be externalized in physical form. But what would happen if
we instead submitted the history of communication technology to
the rigours of the broader history of technology?
Sidney Finkelstein noted that McLuhan’s overemphasis on
the historical significance of the phonetic alphabet causes him to
underestimate the importance of other forms of exteriorization
besides writing:
“Tribal society . . . was not ‘oral’ and ‘auditory.’ It had its speech
‘magic,’ incantations, poetic rituals, music and also its ‘magic’
paintings, sculpture, masks and dances as well as its tools and
shapely utensils. There are extraordinary cave paintings dating back
20,000 years. The tribesmen had keen, observant eyes and skillful
hands as well as sensitive ears.” . . .
[The] implications are tremendous. There were technologies
prior to writing that served some of its functions. Painting and
sculpture externalized memory and solidified institutional forms
over time. Musical instruments and musical technique were dis-
ciplines of the body that subordinated collective communication to
abstract codes, even if they were not semantico-referential codes like
those of writing. There are at least four major communication tech-
nologies that predate writing and that could conceivably have per-
formed some combination of the functions Toronto School authors
attribute to writing: painting, sculpture, architecture (especially its
monumental and ornamental forms), and musical instruments. If,
with Edmund Carpenter (1960), we believe that language and writ-
ing are media, then all of these pre-writing technologies are also
“early media.” As with modern media, these technologies engage,
orient, and organize the senses even as they are conditioned by

them. (Sterne 2011, 221)
“The Theology of Sound” concludes:
It is time we left aside antiquated notions of sensation and cultural

difference and built a global history and anthropology of commu-
nication without a psychosocial, developmental concept such as
orality. We must construct new studies of early media and new eth-
nographies that do not posit the ascendancy of the White, Christian
West as the meaning of history. In the process, we must re-read our
own historical and anthropological archives, but it is also time that
we reach beyond them. (Sterne 2011, 222)
Sterne emphasizes “Christian” along with “White” and “West,” as he has

argued in this essay that Walter Ong—a Jesuit priest—was committed to
a Christian theology of “spirit and letter” that mapped onto his theories
of orality and literacy and his ways of valorizing the former. Theorizing a
“secondary orality” associated with electronic media, says Sterne, for Ong
was tantamount to heralding the second coming of Christ.
Jonathan Sterne, and the doorway to “sound studies” that he has
cracked open for me, offer tremendous new possibilities for understand-
ing orality—or (since he proposes to toss out this old concept with its trou-
blesome baggage) for understanding media and cognition. At this point I
will mention just a few questions about the reach of his critique.
Sterne may have reduced early media thinkers to their mistakes, ignor-
ing their contributions. McLuhan’s essentialist and evolutionary views
have been well exposed by Sterne and others such as Vail and White.
But McLuhan has another side that seems to contradict these very views.
He repeatedly asserts that orality and literacy are not linear stages. The
Gutenberg Galaxy is organized by a “mosaic or field approach” rather than
“a series of views of fixed relationships.” Instead of chapters he presents
107 short sections with bold headings set between black lines. The head-
ings are thematic, suggestive, associative. “Thus the galaxy or constella-
tion of events upon which the present study concentrates is itself a mosaic
of perpetually interacting forms that have undergone kaleidoscopic
transformations—particularly in our own time” (unnumbered opening
page). He mischievously suggests at the beginning that the last section of
the book may be the best introduction.13 Perhaps too disorganized a thinker
220 Bodies of Song
to be an effective proponent of linear evolutionary progress, McLuhan

often startles me with insightful and intriguing pronouncements.
Sterne’s audiovisual litany has a stripped-down form that highlights its
oversimplification. (The list could use some editing: at least points 2 and
6 appear to be redundant.) But the ideas Sterne criticizes are not all non-
sense. There is something to the temporal-spatial associations that have
been attributed to hearing and seeing. What is that something? While
the modes of sense perception cannot be understood as separate, there
is something distinct about them that should not be erased. How do the
senses work, both separately and together? There is something to the idea
that reading feeds into more abstract intellectual activity relying on certain
kinds of brain function, while oral poetry and song affect the body and
nervous system differently. How to describe and explain such differences?
We can agree with Sterne that it is wrong to say the senses are separate,
function in distinct parts of the brain, and have a zero-sum relationship
where dominance of one sense suppresses the others. We can add that
the classic list of five senses is outdated. After that, what can we say about
differences between a written and an oral text? Between the experiences
of reading and listening? Between live and mediatized transmission?
Between the locally embodied and the virtual?
In an email exchange, Jonathan Sterne gave a brief answer:
I would say those differences are a mix of biology, psychology, cul-

ture and context. . . . From a standpoint of ignorance, I would make
no generalizations that I would assume are automatically applicable
to Kabir’s work. I also wouldn’t posit a single receiver or experiencer.
I would think in terms of audiences and the different kinds [of peo-
ple] that might come into contact with the text. (email, April 12, 2015)
Sterne’s edited Sound Studies Reader (2012) gives a wealth of examples

of how to investigate sound and audition. He emphasizes audition’s “sta-
tus as embedded in real social relations and its power as a figurative and
imaginative metaphor for other registers of human action” (Sterne 2012,
20). Introducing authors in the first section of the book, Sterne repeatedly
suggests the dangers of over-generalization:
Don Ihde’s classic phenomenology of sound offers a philosophi-

cally informed account of what it means to hear and how auditory
experience might have a certain specificity. Jody Berland’s essay
adds the crucial dimension of positionality to our understanding

of what it means to hear, considering both the social position of
the listener, and her place in a sonic and mediatic culture. Michel
Chion further stratifies listening by thinking through it in terms
of modes—not all listening is the same, and any aesthetic theory
of listening will have to account for the plurality of the process . . .
Charles Hirschkind expands this modal approach to listening by
thinking in terms of Islamic cultures, rather than the West, and in
so doing offers a powerful alternative description of what it means
to listen in modernity. (Sterne 2012, 20)
My investigations in the remainder of this chapter perhaps incline

to the dangerously general, concerned with understanding the physical
nature of perception, the particularity of hearing, and the distinctness of
situations in which Kabir texts are transmitted orally by live performers.
Throughout this book, describing and demonstrating such differences in
various ways, I have argued that that in ignoring oral tradition, we confine
ourselves to an impoverished understanding of Kabir poetry and of its
reception by audiences. In embracing the study of oral tradition, we enrich
our understanding of text and transmission, history and society. We also
enrich our own ways of learning and knowing ourselves.
Are Different Senses Different?

Dogen, the great thirteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher and writer, went
to China to study Zen/Chan Buddhism, as he was not satisfied with the
state of Buddhist teaching at home. When he returned to Japan after five
years of practice in Chinese monasteries, someone asked what he had
learned in China. He replied: “I learned that the eyes are horizontal and
the nose is vertical.”
We know from many sources that the senses are not separate. They
interact in complex ways that neuroscientists are only beginning to under-
stand.14 We also know that there are not just five senses; five is a conven-
tional number that Euro-Americans are used to.15 Amid this complexity
and uncertainty, it is worth remembering that the eyes are horizontal and
the nose is vertical. The commonsense differentiation between sensory
modes is constantly acknowledged by neuroscientists who (unlike me)
know how to study the brain.
222 Bodies of Song
In The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind, Seth Horowitz
says:
About the time I started working on this book, I was contacted by

Brad Lisle of Foxfire Interactive to see if I would be willing to be
a science consultant for a 3-D IMAX film about sound, titled Just
Listen. The very idea of this blew me away—how do you take such
an immersively visual medium as a 3-D IMAX film and make it
focus on something as nonvisual as sound? (Horowitz 2012, 132)
Horowitz learned that a brilliant filmmaking team could in fact use a

visual medium to make a sonic point. But this did not obliterate the dif-
ference between vision and sound. The difference made the point more
dramatic and powerful.
John Henshaw begins his book, A Tour of the Senses, with this state-
ment: “If you are lucky, this is what you were born with: two eyes, two ears,
a nose, a tongue, a balance mechanism in your inner ear, and a layer of
skin brimming over with all kinds of sensors” (Henshaw 2012, 1). He then
provides a short paragraph on each of these sense organs. For example, on
eyes and ears:
The eyes are about halfway from the bottom of the chin to the top
of the skull. Lidded and lashed for protection, these superb opti-
cal instruments distinguish millions of colors, instantly recognize
faces, function in conditions varying from near darkness to intense
brightness, and sort out, unaided, tiny differences between particles
much smaller than a grain of sand.
On the other side of the head, at about the same level as the eyes, are
the ears. The exterior parts, somewhat comical-looking and formed of
cartilage, aid and protect the marvelous auditory instruments inside.
The ears allow the brain to distinguish and interpret sound waves
whose pressures and frequencies vary over astonishing ranges. (ibid.)
Sensory experience becomes complex after sound or light gets past the
perceiver-portals: the data gathered by “all this superb instrumentation . . .
must be filtered, reconstructed, and interpreted, and that is the job of the
brain” (Henshaw 2012, 2). Sensory modes do not remain separate once the
brain begins to process what is coming in. But the sense organs are sepa-
rate. The eyes, ears, and other sense organs each process different kinds
of physical phenomena. A distinct part of the brain is called the auditory
cortex. Parts of the midbrain and brainstem are also specialized for pro-
cessing auditory stimuli. Having disposed of the oversimplifications of
the audiovisual litany as presented by Sterne, we still know that reading a
poem produces a markedly different experience from hearing it.
Some Things We Know about Sound

Seth Horowitz’s book introduces us to what is particular about sound and
hearing. For example, hearing is faster than any other sense:
Vision is a relatively fast-acting sense that works slightly faster

than our conscious recognition of what we see. Smell and taste are
slowpokes, working over the course of seconds or more. Touch,
a mechanosensory sense, can work quickly (as in light touch) or
slowly (as in pain), but only over a restricted range. By contrast, ani-
mals and humans can detect and respond to changes in sound that
occur in less than a millionth of a second and to the content of com-
plex sounds over the course of hours. . . . Whether it’s a humpback
whale listening to hours-long song cycles during its migrations or
a bat using a submicrosecond difference in echoes to determine
if something is an edible treat or a branch to be avoided, sound
helps animals find food, mate, play, and sleep; ignoring it can get
them eaten pretty fast. Which is probably why vibration detection,
including what we humans . . . call hearing, is one of the most basic
and universal sensory systems that any earthly organism can have.
(Horowitz 2012, 3)16
Of all the senses, why does Horowitz call hearing “universal”? He

notes that there are “plenty of blind animals,” and there are animals that
lack sensitivity to touch, smell, and taste. But “we never find . . . deaf ani-
mals”—at least not among vertebrates. Since “all animals with backbones
hear,” he calls hearing “the most universal of the senses” (ibid., 3), and he
ties this universality to the fact that sound is everywhere:
There is no such thing as silence. We are constantly immersed in

and affected by sound and vibration. This is true no matter where
you go, from the deepest underwater trenches to the highest, almost
airless peaks of the Himalayas. In truly quiet areas you can even
hear the sound of air molecules vibrating inside your ear canals or
the noise of the fluid in your ears themselves. (ibid., 2)
224 Bodies of Song
Sound is everywhere there is life (and other places). Anywhere

there is matter and energy, there is vibration, and any vibration can
transfer energy and information to a receiver who is listening. And
the wide range of vibration perceivable by living things, from the
single thud of a footstep . . . to the incredibly high-frequency sounds
that form a dolphin’s natural ultrasound, requires a sensory system
thousands of times faster than its slower cousins, vision, smell,
and taste. It is this faster-than-thought auditory speed, with a wide
range of tones and timbres that visual color cannot hope to match,
and greater flexibility than the chemical sensitivities of taste and
smell, that lets sound underlie and drive a fantastic range of sub-
conscious elements in the living organism (ibid., 5)
“Universality” is a spatial image, “speed” a temporal one. Encompassing

both, Horowitz’s language suggests to me that sound and hearing may
take us to deeper, less conscious levels of perception, physiological pro-
cessing, and body-mind integration than other sensory avenues:
Combined with wildly divergent ways of listening by different spe-

cies and the increasingly complex ways of using information by
living things, the presence of sound drives the evolution, develop-
ment, and day-to-day function of the mind. (ibid.)
“Fundamental” and “deep” are also spatial images that depend on an up-down
metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). To incorporate the temporal aspect
suggested by the inconceivable speed of vibration, I would add the adjective
“immediate.” Sound may be uniquely suited to provide an experience that is
revelatory of present time, verging on an experience that is beyond media.
A Word about Music

We don’t need a neuroscientist to prove to us that music is powerful,
attractive, and important to human beings. But a few citations from scien-
tists can put us in mind of how this is so, and why, therefore, listening to
Kabir songs is likely to be a profoundly different experience from reading
Kabir poems.
Everyone knows that music has enormous power to stir emotion—more
because of than in spite of its independence from language. Oliver Sacks,
the well-known physician, neurologist, and author, reflects on the innate

“musicophilia” of human nature in his book of that name.
This propensity to music shows itself in infancy, is manifest and

central in every culture, and probably goes back to the very begin-
nings of our species. . . . We humans are a musical species no less
than a linguistic one. . . . All of us (with very few exceptions) can
perceive music, perceive tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic con-
tours, harmony, and (perhaps most elementally) rhythm. We inte-
grate all of these and “construct” music in our minds using many
different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious struc-
tural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound
emotional reaction to music. . . . Listening to music is not just audi-
tory and emotional, it is motoric as well. “We listen to music with
our muscles,” as Nietzsche said. (Sacks 2007, x–xi)
A scientist in a documentary film on the sense of hearing says:
One of the things that we found is that music activates every region
of the brain. Twenty years ago we thought that music was predomi-
nantly lateralized, that is, exclusive to the right hemisphere. That
turns out to be overly simplistic. What we know now is that music
activates both sides of the brain, and the back, the top and the bot-
tom, the outside and the inside. In fact music activates every region
of the brain that we’ve so far mapped, perhaps more so than any
other human activity.”17
Among the types of sensory inputs, Seth Horowitz points to sounds

as particularly “powerful stimuli for emotions.” Among sounds, “those
that evoke the strongest emotional response tend to be those from living
things, especially other humans” (Horowitz 2012, 128). After observations
on the emotional power of human-produced sounds, he moves to a chapter
amusingly titled “Ten Dollars to the First Person Who Can Define ‘Music’
(and Get a Musician, a Psychologist, a Composer, a Neuroscientist, and
Someone Listening to an iPod to Agree).” The chapter on music begins
with a description of an amazing percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie:
Glennie owns and plays almost two thousand instruments, from

classics such as marimbas and xylophones to custom-made and
226 Bodies of Song
haunting oddities such as the waterphone. What I was fascinated

by as I watched her play a short piece she had written was the fact
that she wasn’t playing the instrument so much as she was play-
ing the room itself. Walking barefoot up to the six-foot-long con-
cert marimba, she positioned herself and the instrument carefully,
then rose up on her toes, tilted her head back, and with four mallets
struck the first notes and made the whole room ring.
. . . I felt the stage tremble and walls of sound fill the space and
bounce back like a tidal wave toward the source. . . . It was as if she
had created a sonic sculpture that changed over the course of the
first few seconds. . . . As Dame Glennie launched into the remain-
der of the piece, using her whole body to play the instrument, but
always with her bare feet in solid contact with the floor, her head
thrown back, exposing her neck and body to the vibrations from
the marimba, I realized that I was in the presence of someone who
personified the complexities that science has . . . dealing with music.
Evelyn Glennie was filling a space with music.
Oh, and by the way: Glennie is mostly deaf. . . .
When I asked her . . . —“What is music?”—her reply was that
music was something that you create and listen to with your whole
body, not just through your ears. (Horowitz 2012, 134–35)
By using the dramatic example of a musician who can’t hear, Horowitz

emphasizes the nature of musical sound in live performance as a
whole-body and whole-space experience. Vibrations fill body and space.
They move in astonishing living patterns, creating sonic sculptures that
keep transforming, simultaneously drawing and erasing boundaries,
revealing the fluidity of forms. The body, the room, and the objects in it
are vibrationally, dynamically sculpted together; barriers between inside
and outside, in the moments of this experience, are down.18
“Secondary Orality”: Is the Internet

Like Oral Tradition?
Marshall McLuhan predicted that electric circuitry would operate like a
global neural network and that the coming era would overturn the long
reign of print, the dominance of the eye and fixed-point linear perspec-
tive. Electronic media would be more multisensory, even kinesthetic—in
some sense recalling the kinesthetic properties of oral culture. The instan-
taneous and multidirectional nature of new media would make communi-
cation more performative.
Half a century later, twenty years or so into the age of the internet,
engineers, biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists,
and literary scholars (among others) are rushing to advance, explain, and
theorize the rapidly evolving electronic communication technologies.
Meanwhile all of us are using them, bending our lives around them, our
fingers constantly playing across keyboards, stroking silky glass screens,
sliding on the smoothest metal mousepads. Writers on literature and cul-
ture have been fascinated by the affinities between oral-performative and
internet-mediated communication. These affinities could pose a challenge
to my argument for the distinct character of oral performance. In this
section, I will lay out and refute the case for fundamental oral/electronic
similarity
Walter Ong coined the term “secondary orality” in 1971, referring to the
electronically mediated culture of radio, television, telephone, film, and
early computers. Here he summarizes the concept in a later book:
I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of

writing or print, “primary orality.” It is “primary” by contrast with
the “secondary orality” of present-day high technology culture, in
which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television and
other electronic devices that depend for their existence and func-
tioning on writing and print. Today primary oral culture in the strict
sense hardly exists, since every culture knows of writing and has
some experience of its effects. Still, to varying degrees many cul-
tures and sub-cultures, even in a high-technology ambiance, pre-
serve much of the mind-set of primary orality. (Ong 1982, 11)
The notion of secondary orality gained currency as electronic media

moved to the center of our lives. Scholars have applied it to texts as diverse
as the Bible and Bollywood movies. The abstract of a web-published essay
by Robert M. Fowler is typical:
As different as ancient, primary oral cultures and postmodern,

secondary oral cultures are, there are also some remarkable simi-
larities that are only now emerging into view. In this paper I shall
take hypertext/hypermedia as paradigmatic of the new electronic
228 Bodies of Song
information technologies, and explore how coming to grips with

hypertext/hypermedia might, paradoxically, help us to understand
better ancient oral and manuscript cultures, generally, and the
Bible, in particular.19
John Miles Foley offers elaborate ways of exploring and experimenting

with orality, literacy, and the internet in his website <www.pathwayspro-
ject.org>. On discovering this site, I decided to incorporate some of its
ideas into my book. Navigating the links, I prepared to quote relevant pas-
sages. Then I paused to reflect on the activity of copying and pasting pages
of hypertext into a book, from a website designed to demonstrate, among
other things, freedom from the ideology and experience of the book. But
this was a passing irony. We know, and Foley recognizes, that the various
technologies of communication never stay in their own places but tangle
with each other like the proliferating cables behind our computer desks.
So I proceeded to cut and paste.
Foley adopts the term “agora” from Plato to refer to a place of pub-
lic discussion. He uses tAgora, oAgora, and eAgora for, respectively, the
textual (written), oral, and electronic platforms of such discussion in our
time. He also uses OT and IT for oral tradition and internet. The pas-
sages that I collected in the summer of 2009 and on a revisit in 2013 may
well be altered or gone by the time my book comes out. But here they
are, removed from the fluidity of the internet and stuck in a print object.
I retain the underlining of hyperlinks, though you can’t put your finger on
them and make this page disappear.
In a passage captured in 2009, Where Living Sounds Go to Die,
Foley characterizes the act of transferring an oral performance to the
tAgora—reducing it to a written text—as “a kind of ritual killing.” In 2013
the bloody image is gone (replaced by taxidermy!), and the content is
developed more fully. Under Ideology of the text, he enumerates some of
the losses incurred by such a transference:
We lose vocal features such as intonation, loudness and soft-

ness, and silence. We lose visual signals like gesture and facial
expression, not to mention meanings attached to costume, set-
ting, and props. We lose the musical and rhythmical dimensions
of performance. Critically, we lose the background of variability,
the network of potentials out of which any single performance
emerges. Just as importantly, we lose the contribution of the
audience, real or implied, and any interaction that influences

how the performer proceeds. And, not by any means least, we
lose the historical and cultural context, as well as the general
idiomatic content of the performance (dimensions that are seg-
regated to other parts of the ruthlessly linear book even in the
best-case scenario).
Under Don’t trust everything you read in books, Foley recounts “the dire
implications” of reducing OT to written text:
Pity the poor non-textual aspects of the OT phenomena we’re try-

ing to understand and represent. Clearly their acoustic and visual
dimensions can’t be housed between two covers; more basically
yet, performer(s) become at best vicarious and any audiences are
conspicuous by their absence. On these grounds alone we might
as well forget anything but severely flawed representations of oral
traditions. Add a DVD or CD? Only if you have a generous pub-
lisher, and then the add-ons are irremediably static: uncorrectable,
un-updatable, unsupplementable, ever-inert. Thankfully, eCompan-
ions and eEditions can help us move beyond this media impasse,
but as yet they’re not widely in play.
But most fundamentally it’s the quality of immutability, the very
characteristic that we textual devotees so highly prize, that blocks
our way. Whatever its (supposed) advantages, a commitment to
(imagined) immutability deprives OT of its core identity. It guar-
antees distortion, precludes verisimilitude and emergence. Freeze
the performance, reduce it to print and/or static files, and what
happens? The life, the ongoingness, the right-now, event-centered
nature that defined the performance’s most essential reality all per-
ish without a trace. And in their place stands an artifact complete in
itself and yet empty—a cenotaph, a triumph of taxidermy.
The moral? Oral tradition can’t be captured in texts, no mat-
ter how strong our ideological motivation. You just can’t trust an
em-booked oral tradition—not least because it’s an oxymoron and
a bald-faced lie.
Foley’s <www.pathwaysproject.org> is very interesting site, and I rec-

ommend perusing it. But I’m going to argue with one of its basic claims
here. My argument has mutated from what it was in an earlier draft of this
230 Bodies of Song
chapter, because the site itself has mutated. In 2009, Foley declared on
the home page:
The goal of the Project is to explain and illustrate a central

thesis—namely, that humankind’s oldest and newest thought-
technologies, oral tradition and the internet (abbreviated here as OT
and IT), are fundamentally alike. Hardly identical, of course, but sur-
prisingly similar in their structure and dynamics.
In 2013, he says:
The major purpose of the Pathways Project is to illustrate and

explain the fundamental similarities and correspondences between
humankind’s oldest and newest thought-technologies: oral tradi-
tion and the Internet. Despite superficial differences, both tech-
nologies are radically alike in depending not on static products but
rather on continuous processes, not on “What?” but on “How do
I get there?” In contrast to the fixed spatial organization of the page
and book, the technologies of oral tradition and the Internet mime
the way we think by processing along pathways within a network. In
both media it’s pathways—not things—that matter.
A link called “Disclaimer” is more prominent in 2013 than it was in

2009. It has become one of the few bold headings on the left side of the
home page. The statements on the home page and the Disclaimer are now
more nuanced. The words “fundamentally alike” are replaced by “radically
alike.” The Disclaimer emphasizes the more subtle idea of “homology”:
The Pathways Project is devoted to exploring the homology between

oral tradition (OT) and Internet technology (IT). But let me be care-
ful to stipulate a basic and very important disclaimer: “homology”
does not mean “absolute equivalence.” On the web, and I would add
on the web we call OT, it means “the quality of being similar or cor-
responding in position or value or structure or function.”
Nowhere in either the morphing book or the online wiki do
I make the reductive claim that these two media-technologies are
simply identical. Nowhere is it argued—nor should it be—that the
oAgora and eAgora are “the same place.”
What the Project seeks to explain and represent is the striking real-
ity that, despite the many obvious contrasts between OT and IT, the two
media share a fundamental functionality: navigating through linked
networks of potentials. They offer comparable vehicles or sets of strate-
gies for the creation and transmission of knowledge, art, and ideas,
strategies that are categorically different from those used in the tAgora.
The oAgora and eAgora present similar—even cognate—opportunities
for virtual surfing rather than for tAgora trekking.
In other words, the Pathways Project explores a comparison/
contrast of remarkably similar but non-identical ways of construing
and shaping reality. How do OT and IT affect and even determine
the ways in which we communicate? How do the cognitive pros-
theses they provide differ from our trusty, ideologically ingrained
medium of texts? In broadest perspective, then, the central thesis
of the Project maintains that OT and IT are homologous in miming
the way we think—notwithstanding the many obvious contrasts in
design and usage between the oAgora and the eAgora.
Next comes a section headed “The ‘fine print.’ ” I quote only topic sen-
tences; under each topic, Foley provides a paragraph elaborating on the point.
To make certain that the scale stays balanced and to avoid simplistic
equation of technologies, here are a few ways in which the OT-IT
homology resists reductionism and makes room for the innate
complexity of media-worlds:
1. Texts can exist online.
2. OT can morph into texts and enter the tAgora.
3. Communication can move into and out of multiple agoras.
4. Communication in the contemporary world requires multiple
citizenship.
5. The conversation continues . . . (linking to comments on and critiques
of the project and Foley’s responses).
The Disclaimer concludes with a new statement, “Coda: Homology and

Diversity”:
Once again, then, homology describes a relationship of similarity,

but not of identity. Any idea or concept worth entertaining must
account for complexity, counter-examples, and general untidiness,
232 Bodies of Song
and the OT-IT homology at the basis of the Pathways Project is no

exception. As the Project seeks to illustrate in many different areas,
OT and IT do their media-work not by adhering to verbatim singu-
larity but by navigating pathways through networks of potentials.
Variation within limits is the ultimate source of their strength and
their staying power. Both of these verbal marketplaces thrive, in
other words, by remaining forever “under construction.”
The oAgora and eAgora are hardly identical or superimposable,
but they are importantly alike in fostering activities that—in their
own particular, highly diverse ways—mime the way we think.
All of these changes speak to my argument, which was originally

directed against the term “fundamentally alike” and against the marginal-
izing implications of terms like “Disclaimer” and “The Fine Print.” But
the objection I am raising remains salient. Please recall the losses so elo-
quently enumerated under Ideology of the text and Don’t trust everything
you read in books. Those things are still lost in IT. The affinities that Foley
shows between OT and IT are not about orality—that is, they have nothing
to do with sound, voice, hearing, speaking, listening, presence, context,
contact of performers and audiences. They are only about text and thought
processes: ephemerality of text, interactivity between consumer and con-
tent, the possibility of multiple outcomes, the contrast between dynamic
pathways as against static products. The orality I speak of requires the
presence together of physical bodies, and the production and communica-
tion of sound. Physical presence and social interaction entail a quality of
embodiment very different from what occurs with internet communica-
tion. This is not just a marginal point. It is crucial.
Is it possible to speak of fullness of embodiment, or of body-mind
integration? There are pathways, instantaneity, and unpredictability on
the internet as in oral performance. But these electronic pathways are
relatively disembodied or dis-integrated, as I will now try to explain. On
the internet there is no physical vibration among interacting bodies, no
people responding (with combinations of spontaneity and cultural con-
ditioning) to the moment of performance in each other’s presence. We
are looking at screens. The visual is still hyperdominant. Sounds come
out of our computers, true, but they are sounds of simulated objects, not
real objects and forces colliding in our vicinity. There’s no smell or taste.
There’s no touch, apart from fingers tapping plastic keyboards or slid-
ing along screen surfaces that are weirdly sensuous in a nonhuman way.
We cannot touch each other on the internet. McLuhan claimed that print
was the technology of individualism. Strangely, electronic media often
function (despite social media and communication free of spatial barri-
ers) as a technology of hyperindividualism. Think of the icon of the iPod
that appeared in countless ads in the early 2000s: the black silhouette
of an individual with earbuds, isolated in her music, oblivious to ambi-
ent sound, leaping in an attitude of exhilaration on backgroundless bill-
boards, dancing with no partner. There is already a small library of work
arguing that our constant connectivity may be destroying our capacity for
real connection.20
The body tends to be activated and energized in oral performance,
immobilized and deadened on the internet. Have your felt yourself go
rigid as you disappear down the vortex of your browser or smartphone?
Have you stumbled out of your chair with difficulty after hours on the
computer, disoriented and stiff, like someone emerging from trance? In
electronic worlds, separation of mental and physical, of self and environ-
ment, tends to become extreme. This difference touches every comparison
we might make.
We can speak, for instance, of memory. In the conditions of oral per-
formance, the powers of memory are enhanced. In the conditions of elec-
tronic communication, the powers of memory are reduced. If you were
an adult before the advent of cell phones, you know that it was normal to
remember significant phone numbers. Now we click our contact list. No
one remembers phone numbers. As computer memory grows by fantastic
factors, the instantaneity of internet information teaches us that we don’t
need to remember anything. Experiments show that distractions dur-
ing any event seriously detract from our ability to remember that event.
Distractions are the very stuff of web surfing.
In suggesting an enhanced quality of embodiment for the listener
as compared to the web-surfer, I am not, of course, saying that written
and electronic communications are disembodied. Every kind of com-
munication is embodied. The key to the distinction lies in the degree
to which body/mind/environment are separated. The psychologi-
cal term “dissociation” may be applicable here. Dissociation refers to
a separation between mental activity and physical experience, or to a
painful fragmentation of various parts of ourselves.21 Mild forms are
common to everyone’s life; extreme forms are identified as disorders.
Psychiatrist Daniel Siegel, developing a field he calls “interpersonal
neurobiology,” uses the terms integration and disintegration to indicate
234 Bodies of Song
relatively wholesome and dissociative states.22 The evidence we have

been building in this chapter—based on observation of personal experi-
ence, checked through forays into the neuroscience of perception and
cognition—points to less fragmentation, thus more full, dynamic, inte-
grated embodiment, in oral performance than in functioning on the
internet.
Sociality
On December 21, 2012, Charlotte Brown and I had a conversation. At that
time Charlotte was a senior at Stanford, doing a thesis on the neuroscience
of contemplative practice. She had taken a class with me a year earlier, and
we had gotten to know each other pretty well. We started discussing the
cognitive and physiological differences between reading and hearing, and
soon we were having a conversation about conversation. I recorded it and
will present it here as the dialogue that it was. You can see how we moved
from topic to topic, sometimes breaking into each other’s sentences. What
you can’t get is the tones of our voices, how we sometimes got excited,
sometimes talked slower or faster, sometimes laughed, and sometimes
paused, searching for words.
Charlotte (C): Some people learn better by listening to a lecture, oth-

ers by reading the same material. There’s a difference. We develop
differently—the way we use our senses, the way senses interact
with memory, and so on. . . . So why does Horowitz call hearing the
universal sense?
Linda (L): [After a couple of unfinished sentences.] This is stupid. I can’t
remember, though I read it in the preface. I was scanning the book, try-
ing to discover quickly what chapters were most relevant so I wouldn’t
have to read the whole book. I read sections of chapters, always focus-
ing on getting the pieces that were useful to me as quickly as possible.
C: Would it be different if you’d been having a conversation with Horowitz?
Would you be more likely to remember?
L: Yes.
C: Why?
L: Different responses come into play when two people are physically
together and interacting. The trajectory of the conversation is differ-
ent when they are reaching together toward something of common
interest. Each person’s responses affect the other, and they go to unpre-
dictable places.
C: The book is a fixed object that you can control to a large extent. You’re
the only active one.
L: I use certain cognitive functions to search the book. In conversation
I use more functions, or use my abilities more flexibly. We’re being
spontaneous, talking in multiple registers.
C: I have a visual image. The dots of where our conversation goes wouldn’t
have the linearity of the progression of discourse in a book. It would
have a different logic, the logic of two people doing something together.
[Charlotte called this “second-person space” and recalled hearing sci-
entists speak of second- and third-person space as factors that changed
the nature of communication.]
L: Reading a book is a communication process too. But the presence of
more than one person fundamentally alters the process.
C: Yes, there are so many things going on. You’re getting cues on many
more levels. Even if you’re just reciting something, you’re getting feed-
back from the audience, you know the environment you’re in, and you
tailor your performance to fit that environment.
L: Actually the feedback goes back and forth. You send stuff out to the
audience, they laugh—
C: Exactly. It’s very dynamic and it takes both parties to tell the story in a
way that’s memorable. With reading there’s still a dynamic process, but
it’s within you. Maybe I’m going out on a limb, but it seems that with
a book there’s nothing to isolate the process from all the thoughts that
are always going on in your head. It’s in the same voice. We’re reading
in our voice. We’re constantly thinking and elaborating on things. But
as soon as we’re in this more dynamic environment, there’s a lot more
stimulation, and the likelihood of remembering it goes up.
L: All of these things are not yet about orality, not about hearing and listen-
ing. They’re about aliveness of communication in person, in the flesh.
This is also an important part of what I’m dealing with.
C: Yes, but we were talking about the development of the—
L: Yeah, let’s get back to that. I’m just remembering that. You said first of
all . . . what did you say about the womb?
C: You start hearing before you start seeing. I don’t know if you start seeing
in the womb. But you definitely start hearing pretty early on, and it’s
one of the first neural pathways to be laid out as far as your senses go.
236 Bodies of Song
L: Then would it be a reasonable inference that when we are listening,

when we are using our hearing, we’re tuning into something that’s
more . . . what language to use? More basic, more old brain—
C: There’s an argument that that’s where you learn your mother’s voice, in
the womb. . . . I don’t know, it’s hard to say. An evolutionary psycholo-
gist might make some claim about the early development of the sound
system. There’s something fundamental about this system—
L: —that brings in a more multilevel experience, whatever we mean by
levels. Vision develops later, so hearing is more on some . . . what level?
Can we say?
C: It’s difficult. Hearing probably develops around the same time as your
heartbeat starts.
L: Horowitz has a chapter on music. That’s the one I read first. And I’ve
been reading Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia. Horowitz says it’s very dif-
ficult to define music, though we can observe that whatever we call
music is very important in every culture. The way that scientists have
tried to study music is to focus on some mathematical relationships
between consonance and dissonance, and time beats, rhythm. So when
you said “heartbeat,” I thought “music.”
C: Yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s been found that what people like to listen to is
something called the edge of chaos. There’s enough order, but enough
variability that it’s interesting. It’s like plain order is boring, and chaos
is unappealing.
L: This is so interesting. Now I want you to go back to something you said
earlier, which is that everybody learns language orally. Only later do we
learn to read, and only even later can we read silently. [We pause the
recording to put on water to heat for tea.]
Some of the things we’ve discussed about the difference between read-
ing and oral-performative communication have more to do with the
performative—or as you say, with second-person space—than with the
oral. But some of them do have to do with the oral. So the final ques-
tion I guess . . . this conversation has been very useful to me, but maybe
I have to ask some of these guys [like Horowitz, Sacks, Lakoff] who
really know about this. Is there anything to be said about the simple
fact that something comes in here and vibrates the hairs on your little
hearing area here instead of being photons or whatever those things
are that hit your retina? I don’t even have the language. Even though
it gets very complicated as soon as it gets into your nervous system, is
there anything to be said about just the fact that it starts in your ear?
C: I wouldn’t think so, to be honest. I don’t know if you can isolate it to

the ear.
L: Could we say something about the fact that it’s hearing, that it’s sound
instead of light?
C: Vibrations instead of photons? They’re each as arbitrary as the other.
We’ve synergistically developed that these are the two most useful ways
to interact with the environment. We’ve honed both our eyes and our
ears to work within these physical realms. I don’t think you can parse
them apart. There might be something in our visual system that does a
ton of re-creating. Your visual system is very active in that you’re always
making the visual picture of the world you live in, doing way more than
what you’re receiving. I’m not sure you’re doing that much making up
with the auditory system.
L: So the auditory system is less conceptual?
C: Maybe. It was drilled into me that we are always thinking and construct-
ing with the visual system, not so much with the auditory. But some-
thing else came to mind as far as embodiment is concerned. In an oral
tradition there’s more dynamic embodiment.
L: Yes, or more fully integrated embodiment. We can go inductively from
common everyday experience. You sit and read a book, your body is
locked in, you tend to dissociate mental from physical—
C: Totally.
L: —and even more so when you’re sucked into the internet. There’s a the-
ory called secondary orality that compares the way the internet works
and the way things happen in an oral tradition, claiming that the inter-
net is similar to oral tradition in certain ways. But when you’re on
the internet or sucked into your smartphone, you get more and more
dissociated from the physical world. After two hours your body is stiff,
you feel unhealthy, you get up and you’re literally stiff, out of touch,
and you realize that you’ve been withdrawn. I’ve been searching for
language to say in what way receiving things in a live oral form is
embodied differently. When you’re on the internet or reading a book,
you’re not out of your body, you’re still in your body. So I’ve come up
with this idea of dissociation. In psychology it becomes a disorder.
Being severely dissociated is one of the things that goes with trauma
or with anxiety disorders. It comes up in addiction too. We all know
what it’s like in milder forms. I don’t even know the meaning of the
word “mental” anymore as separated from “physical,” but somehow
we experience that we are mentally cut off, dissociated from our bodies
238 Bodies of Song
and things in the world. . . . It’s really awkward to figure out what lan-
guage to use about embodiment, about the experience of fuller and
less full embodiment. Fuller embodiment is when you don’t feel vio-
lently chopped up. You know how students feel when they’re forced to
be intellectual all the time—
C: Yeah!
L: What do we mean when we say “in your head”? We all know what it
feels like, and we don’t like it. Well, some people may like it because
they make money off of it. Or some people don’t exhibit the unhealthy
aspects of it, so they can be intellectuals without suffering from it. But
what do we mean when we say “in your head” in that painful sort of
way, where you feel like you’re excluding all these other aspects of your
life, of yourself?
C: It would be interesting to see what it feels like at that moment when you
realize “I need to get out of my head.” Your body feels anxious. It might
be abandonment. You abandon your body and it’s getting anxious. You
can forget to eat and sleep. In any kind of flow state—
L: What do we mean by flow state? We know it feels good. We have anec-
dotal descriptions that people give. I’m sure that the guy with the
unpronounceable name has some scientific description.
C: Yes and no. Csikszentmihalyi, the flow guy, his book doesn’t go into
anything scientific because we’re not there. Science is not yet able to
wrestle with consciousness.
L: So he’s just taking people’s impressionistic descriptions of how they feel
whole, at peace, out of time—?
C: There are surveys, statistics about how many times the same language
comes up, because if it does, that suggests that there’s something real.
Psychology comes down to statistics.
L: Would it be easy to pull out the kind of language they were testing for,
for the flow experience?
C: I can pull up the powerpoints on embodied consciousness that I got this
summer [at the Mind and Life conference].
L: So what is disembodied or less embodied consciousness?
C: The reason there is a science of embodied consciousness is that in the
1950s they honest to god believed that by 2000 we’d be able to create a
brain in a vat that would have consciousness. In backlash there was the
embodied cognition movement—
L: George Lakoff etc.?
C: Yeah.
L: I’m into those guys too. So they were reacting to a theory that cognition
can be disembodied—
C: Earlier theorists thought consciousness was in the mind.
L: And the mind was in the skull?
C: The mind’s the brain, yeah. The mind is what the brain produces.
L: The Lakoff lineage is saying that all of our cognition is embodied, not
that something is more or less embodied. But I’m trying to say that
there is such a thing as greater or lesser embodiment, or greater or
lesser integration of body-mind. I need to clarify the language. Here’s
where the problem of simulation and virtual reality comes in. [Giving
Charlotte’s arm a sudden push.] When I imagine hitting someone’s
arm, they say the same things happen in my brain as when I really
do it. I’m making a case that no matter how indistinguishable to us
virtual reality becomes from reality, or no matter how fascinatingly
we reproduce physical experience in the simulations of our brain, we
never eliminate the category of the physical, of the real. We don’t end
up saying it’s the same thing. I’m clinging to that! Someone would
probably challenge my assertion that there is a physical reality that’s
distinct from any simulation of it.
C: It may be the depth of the processing. If you get a brain scan of some-
one actually getting hit, or just thinking about getting hit, it happens
in the same regions, but the strength of the signal is not the same. The
memory associated with it is not the same.
At this point we turned off the recorder. Our conversation shifted into
less intense modes until we smilingly said goodbye.
Sadness about Dying Media

Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story portrays a world
not far in the future in which the most disturbing potentialities of today’s
communication media, in concert with economic and political trends,
have ripened to create a darkly comic dystopia. In a radio interview with
Terry Gross he describes the character Eunice, “a very smart girl” who lives
in a world “where the only things that matter are the things that happen
instantly. They pop out at you, and then they’re forgotten and we move on
to the next thing.”
240 Bodies of Song
Gary Shteyngart (GS): She went to Elderburg College, it’s a small women’s
school . . . where she was taught to scan books . . . you can just get all the
information very quickly and then throw the book away. This is not sci-
ence fiction, this is actually happening on college campuses now. She
majored in Images and had a minor in Assertiveness.
Terry Gross (TG): Do you feel like Lenny [the novel’s hero]—somebody
who is an artifact of the past—because you read books, and even more
. . . you write books?
GS: It’s so depressing. I feel like I’m insane to write novels. I feel like
one of those last Japanese soldiers on one of those islands, he’s hid-
ing in a cave and still shooting at the Americans . . . and he hasn’t
heard that the emperor has surrendered. That’s what I feel like all
the time.
TG: What about your texting life and your smartphone life? . . . Do you find
that your concentration span as a writer or a reader is being changed?
GS: It’s over. My concentration, my reading life, it’s been shot. . . . I’m not
against technology. I love my iPhone passionately, I think it’s a beauti-
ful piece of technology. But sometimes technology outpaces human-
ity’s ability to process it. . . . my mind has been sliced and diced in
so many ways, there are so many packets of information coming at
me, especially in a city like New York . . . even our cabs have television
screens and info centers built into the back seat . . . it’s just shocking.
TG: You say you’ve lost your concentration. So where are you now as a
writer and a reader?
GS: As a reader I go to upstate New York. My i-telephone can’t connect well up
there. . . . my mind begins to readjust and I fall into this idyllic state, and all
of the sudden books make sense to me again. I’m so used to my iPhone
that sometimes I’m pressing on the cover of the book to make some piece
of information light up. . . . [Keeping up with technology] takes you away
from whatever got you interested in doing this to begin with, which is to
sit in a quiet place and try to understand what you are, who you are, and
what the world is around you. . . . When I was writing this book . . . I had to
obviously keep track of everything that was happening. Thank God I had
a great research assistant. But it was an endless information overload. It
made me very very unhappy. . . . It began to affect my . . . relationships . . .
I got run over by three cabs because I was so busy getting information out
of my i-telephone, pressing it and pressing it and hoping something good
would come out of it. Here’s the thing about this new technology. I think
it’s incredibly effective. I just don’t think it’s made anyone much happier.
We are now always connected, but we don’t know what we’re connected
to. It’s just an endless scream of information.23
Is Shteyngart romanticizing the book? Am I romanticizing orality?

Are Plato and Socrates (at the end of this paragraph) romanticizing con-
versation? No, the point I am making is not about nostalgia or romance.
We see our media in different ways in periods of transition. Along with
enthusiasm for and embrace of new media, there is resistance and a sense
of loss. Like Shteyngart, I am attached to my iPhone and weirdly in love
with my MacBook Air. But I note here the contradictions and highlight
some of the consequences of our current media life. Walter Ong captures
an ancient moment of contradiction when he points out that Plato (via his
character Socrates) criticizes writing as dead, inhuman, tending to exter-
nalize and objectify what should remain internal and humanly produced,
destructive of memory, and overall an enemy of intelligence. But to have
an impact, Plato has to criticize writing in writing:
[T]‌o make his objections effective, he put them into writing, just
as one weakness in anti-print positions is that their proponents, to
make their objections more effective, put the objections into print.
The same weakness [exists] in anti-computer positions. . . . Writing
and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word.
Once the word is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize
what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest tech-
nology available. (Ong 1982, 80–81)24
As electronic media overwhelm books, we notice what we are losing as

well as what we are gaining. Gary Shteyngart lovingly describes a public
ritual for reading books.
In Seattle, my friend . . . runs this reading series. People just sit

there reading in this beautiful hotel by a fireplace. They show up,
hundreds of them, sometimes it’s standing room only, and they take
out books. Instead of reading out loud, they just read to themselves
while this fire crackles and they drink wonderful bourbons. . . . That
was so touching . . . to see a whole community of readers just sitting
there, not broadcasting what they’re reading. It wasn’t about them.
It was about the act of reading, which is trying to commune with
the mind of another human being without constantly needing to
242 Bodies of Song
express yourself, to upload your opinions about something: look at

me, look at me, look at me. That’s what I’ve been missing.
When I, as a scholar of Indian poetry who has largely worked with writ-
ten texts, discover the vitality of the oral-performative traditions in which
that poetry still lives, I ask how oral tradition is different and how the dif-
ference enriches our knowledge and experience. This does not imply an
argument that oral is better than written or that either is better than elec-
tronic. It does not imply that written and electronic texts are not moving,
enriching, interesting and inevitable. It does not imply that we should “go
back” to an earlier, fantasized era. It is just an exploration of the particular-
ity and value of experiencing that poetry in oral-performative modes.
Virtual and Simulated Reality

Neuroscientific research and developments in virtual reality have made it
ever more difficult to distinguish between “real” and “virtual” or “simu-
lated” experiences. A recent book by Benjamin Bergen, building on theo-
ries of embodied language and thought pioneered by George Lakoff and
others, demonstrates how the brain’s constant simulation of physical expe-
rience is the key to our ability to learn and make meaning. In contrast to a
theory of abstract or disembodied meaning that Bergen calls “Mentalese,”
embodied simulation “makes use of the same parts of the brain that are
dedicated to directly interacting with the world. When we simulate see-
ing, we use the parts of the brain that allow us to see the world; when we
simulate performing actions, the parts of the brain that direct physical
actions light up” (Bergen 2012, 14). Here “simulation” refers to what hap-
pens when we imagine or think about something. Bergen opens his book
with a vivid description of a polar bear:
When hunting on land, the polar bear will often stalk its prey almost
like a cat would, scooting along its belly to get right up close, and
then pounce, claws first, jaws agape. . . . To understand what this
means, according to the embodied simulation hypothesis, you actu-
ally activate the vision system in your brain to create a virtual visual
experience of what a hunting polar bear would look like. You could
use your auditory system to virtually hear what it would be like for
a polar bear to slide along ice and snow. And you might even use
your brain’s motor system, which controls action, to simulate what
it would feel like to scoot, pounce, extend your arms, and drop your
jaw. . . . Meaning . . . isn’t just abstract mental symbols. It’s a creative
process, in which people construct virtual experiences—embodied
simulations—in their mind’s eye. (Bergen 2012, 15–16) [Of course he
should also have said mind’s ear, skin, tongue, muscles, organs, etc.]
While it is fascinating to realize that we see, hear, feel, taste, touch, speak,
and act in our minds, activating physical/neurological processes associated
with the senses even while our bodies are sitting still and in the absence of
actual sense stimulation, I suspect that Lakoff (who introduces the book)
and Bergen would grant the primacy and difference of direct sense per-
ception and physical experience, on which these more internal cognitive
processes depend.
In Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of
the Virtual Revolution, neuropsychologists Jim Blascovich and Jeremy
Bailenson take us chapter by chapter into ever-deeper virtual waters. We
learn that the body-mind responds to virtual reality as if it were simply real-
ity. A helmeted virtual adventurer at the edge of an electronically simulated
chasm experiences real fear and excitement, with all their attendant neu-
rological, psychological, and physical reactions. Blascovich and Bailenson
assure us that unimaginable, seemingly impossible interactions between
the real and the virtual will soon become commonplace. The gap between
real and virtual will become increasingly elusive. Yet throughout the book,
the notion of a physical reality distinct from virtual reality is a given. They
can’t seem to talk about the marvels of the virtual without reference to the
nonvirtual. They call it sometimes “physical” and sometimes “grounded”
reality. The contrast, spoken or unspoken, is everywhere.
Embodiment is at the center of many discourses of human commu-
nication and meaning in the early twenty-first century, precisely because
of the explosive acceleration in information accessible through comput-
ers, the ever more intricate articulations of humans and machines, the
attraction of a theory in which the body is just another kind of technol-
ogy and nothing matters except information. In his foreword to Bergen’s
book, George Lakoff speaks of the Embodiment Revolution—a post-1970
transformation in thinking about the human and the world, the mind and
language. He was brought up with a different paradigm:
244 Bodies of Song
For centuries, we in the West have thought of ourselves as rational

animals whose mental capacities transcend our bodily nature. In
this traditional view, our minds are abstract, logical, unemotionally
rational, consciously accessible, and above all able to directly fit and
represent the world. Language . . . is a privileged, logical symbol sys-
tem internal to our minds that transparently expresses abstract con-
cepts that are defined in terms of the external world itself. (Bergen
2012, ix)
Lakoff gives a long list of important thinkers and methodologies in the

Embodiment Revolution (not mentioning his own central role, which will
be obvious to anyone acquainted with the field), concluding: “Now, at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the evidence is in. The ballgame is
over. The mind is embodied” (Bergen 2012, x).
Katherine Hayles’s brilliant book How We Became Posthuman also grap-
ples with the strong pull in our period to see the body as indistinguishable
from the machines with which it ever more inextricably interfaces, to see
information as independent of human bodies, to minimize the meaning
and value of consciousness and biological particularity. Though she sees
the dystopic potential of all this, she is not interested in railing against
technology. Technological revolutions are inevitable parts of human evolu-
tion. Our new technologies are interesting and enriching as well as dis-
turbing and dangerous. But she is clear about what she regards as the
nightmare side of the picture: the erasure of the body. The title of her first
chapter suggests the direction in which she hopes we’ll move: “Toward
Embodied Virtuality.”
This book began with a roboticist’s dream that struck me as a night-

mare. I was reading Hans Moravec’s Mind Children: The Future of
Robot and Human Intelligence, enjoying the ingenious variety of his
robots, when I happened upon the passage where he argues it will
soon be possible to download human consciousness into a com-
puter. (Hayles 1999, 1)
She summarizes Moravec’s description of an imagined robot surgeon

pureeing a human brain and pouring its contents into a computer, so that
“the patient, now inhabiting the metallic body of the computer, wakens
to find his consciousness exactly the same as it was before” (ibid.). And
she observes a trend of thought in recent decades, defined by “the belief

that information can circulate unchanged among different material sub-
strates” (ibid.).
Hayles elucidates the “posthuman” by offering a nonexhaustive set of
assumptions that characterize it:
First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over

material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate
is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life.
Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded
as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition since long
before Decartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphe-
nomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the
whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the
posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all
learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with
other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began
before we were born. Fourth, and most important, by these and
other means, the posthuman view configures human being so that
it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the
posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarca-
tions between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic
mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human
goals. . . .
If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who
regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground
of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces
the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced
by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that
recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being,
and that understands human life is embedded in a material world
of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued sur-
vival. (Hayles 1999, 3–5)
So at this moment in media history, feeling an affinity with scientists

who emphasize the fundamental importance and value of embodiment,
I make a case for the particularity and preciousness of a tradition that is
oral, physical, and social. We can’t extricate it from its written and printed
246 Bodies of Song
histories, its digital and virtual futures. But we can take a walk with people
who sing and listen, where sound moves through air and flesh, where
meanings are made by people together. We may discover in ourselves a
longing to encounter this, a joy in entering it. It may be partly an anti-
dote to our technological disembodiment, our carpal-tunnel wrists and
screen-addicted brains, our dreadful isolation in connectivity. It may fleet-
ingly dissolve our alienation from ourselves.
Conclusion
On first looking into orality theory, I focused on sensory perception: the
difference between hearing and seeing, which mapped on to the dif-
ference between listening to songs and reading texts. In the process of
research I discovered that defining the distinctness of Kabir oral tradition,
while it does involve hearing and seeing, also calls into play several other
key processes.
There are differences between ear and eye as portals of sense percep-
tion. Though I am not able to explain this precisely, the differences may
have to do with factors like speed of perception, order of prenatal devel-
opment of sense organs, location in the brain of particular sensory func-
tions, difference between photons and vibrations, perhaps difference in
the physical structure of eyes and ears, and no doubt other matters that
I am not aware of.
There are differences between receiving a Kabir text through live oral
performance and encountering it in the pages of a book, or through other
media, including audio recordings, film, and digital devices.
Equally important to the “oral” distinction are three other compo-
nents: music; enhanced body-mind-world integration in live performance;
and the social nature of the experience.
Ultimately the distinction of receiving Kabir through oral tradition
must be understood as a combination of all these factors: the particularity
of hearing; the quality of embodiment; the power of music; and sociality.
Coda: In the Body

From a Kabir Bhajan
My true guru pierced through me
He put his finger

on my pulse and waves
surged in my veins,
my heart rocked.
He gave me knowledge,
gave me vision
in the middle
of my body.
Syllables burst
into light.
From Field Notes

He strums the tambūrā, his eyes light up, and he says, “The sound of
the tambūrā is so great. Just listen!” The tambūrā has a strong and sharp
beauty, very different from the classical tānpūrā, which is more subtle and
self-effacing. There is more variety in ways of playing the tambūrā: you can
pluck, strum, change the rhythm and sequence of notes. While it is like
the tānpūrā in playing a few notes repeatedly as background and anchor
to keep the pitch, the tambūrā has a brighter, more extroverted sound.
It jumps out at you. A jāgnevālī āvāz, Prahladji says—a voice that wakes
you up.
***
Full moon in the village is beautiful. The sky is big. Electric light and pol-
lution are small. The glow spreads magnificently through sky and trees,
over humans, houses, and animals. Now in the absolute peak of summer,
when the daytime sun is relentless, there is a miraculous cool wind in
the night and early morning. They say this wind is special to Malwa. It is
blowing now: a strong wind that grabs the hair and skin and pulls thinner
trees over on their sides. It’s so cool and strong! Makes you want to cry, as
if compassion had touched you. Sleeping outside, you feel it building up
after midnight till you have to pull a quilt over your body. Like the wind of
awakening in a Kabir poem—gyān kī āndhī. Like the shītaltā of the songs,
the coolness that stands for calm and peace, after the scorching heat of
the sun.
***
248 Bodies of Song
When I sink into music, closing my eyes, I leave the flat, bright realm of
clear-cut categories and logical consistency, which has a kind of aggression
to it (the aggression of argument, being right, winning the point). I am
in a sea of rising and falling images, and a voice pulls me like a current,
its quality vibrating in my vital organs. I relax; the mind is not in control.
I have taken a ride down to a deeper level of my nervous system. Verbal
images, rhythm, and melody float, touch each other, open passageways
inside me. New connections are made, new ideas arise. If I try to grasp
them too roughly, they evaporate. But immediately after the experience
I can gently remember them, and they lead me to new places.
6
A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool

My poems are soft green,
my poems are flaming crimson.
Jose Marti 1
“There are two main kinds of Kabir songs,” said Dinesh Sharma in
our first meeting at the Dewas office of Eklavya, an educational NGO, in
March 2002. “There are the religious [dhārmik] songs about devotion to
God, homage to the guru, recitation of the divine name, things like that.
And there are the social [samājik] songs that criticize caste divisions, intol-
erance, superstition, pomp, rituals, and so on. We wanted to emphasize
the social side.”
Two months later I met Dr. Bhagirathi Prasad, an officer of the elite
Indian Administrative Service (IAS), who held a high post in the Madhya
Pradesh state government. He was the chief guest and inaugural speaker
for the annual all-night Kabir celebration hosted by Prahladji in Lunyakhedi
village. Sitting next to me on stage, behind the singers, Prasad whispered,
“I think singing bhajans is a way to get relief from exploitation and suf-
fering. What do you think?” I whispered that we should discuss this later.
He proceeded to give an excellent speech, both serious and humorous. He
said it’s good that Kabir bhajans bring shītaltā, literally “coolness”—a word
used in this hot climate to signal relief, calm, inner peace. But, he contin-
ued, Kabir did not come only to give coolness. He also lit a fire. He held a
torch, he was a burning coal. Prasad quoted a famous couplet:
Kabir stands in the market, a flaming torch in hand.

First burn your own house down, then come along with me.2
What did Kabir want to burn up? Prasad enumerated various examples,
starting with dishonesty and false pretensions. Later he said to me, “I wish
250 Bodies of Song
Kabir’s followers would not just settle into the pleasure of their bhajans to
escape their suffering. I want them to go out and change society, to burn
up hypocrisy, exploitation, and injustice.”
Both Dinesh, the NGO worker, and Prasad, the IAS officer, pointed
to two distinct voices of Kabir. One would turn us inward, the other
outward. One would speak to our psychospiritual needs, the other to
our social consciousness. This polarity became a recurring motif, once
I moved from studying Kabir as poetry on a page to meeting Kabir in
his living cultural contexts. Some people talked primarily of the reli-
gious Kabir who teaches devotion to the guru and recitation of the divine
name; the interior Kabir who evokes yogic concentration, inner light and
sound, flowing nectar, the boundless nirguṇ reality; the austere Kabir
who warns of imminent death and the urgent need to seek spiritual
insight, to wake up before you die. Others were interested in Kabir as part
of the social and economic order, a low-caste weaver who worked with
his hands, a protester who blasted the institutions of caste, debunked
religious authority, arrogance, injustice, violence, and greed, radically
declared human equality, and reminded us that there’s no escape from
the imperative to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our own
actions. This Kabir also spoke of Hindus and Muslims—their identities
and motives, their craziness and violence, and the potential for living
together in peace.
The present chapter and the final chapter of the book focus on this
question of “social-political” and “religious-spiritual.” Studying oral tradi-
tions includes learning about the social construction of the figure called
Kabir and the interpretation of words attributed to him. People do that
kind of interpreting in everyday contexts, and they don’t publish their
interpretations with Oxford University Press. Just as texts take shape and
change shape in the process of singing and listening, so do the meanings
of texts and the ways of imagining the poet. The political-spiritual ques-
tion often comes up among people who are interested in Kabir in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
How do these two aspects of Kabir get delineated, separated, and
reunited? Who embraces one side while neglecting or rejecting the other?
Who sees them as connected? When people set aside or suppress one
aspect of the Kabir tradition, what are they affirming and protecting? Are
they claiming to represent what Kabir himself said and meant? Merely
emphasizing what they feel needs more attention? Or protecting their own
belief system against a perceived threat?
A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool 251
In this chapter the discussion is embedded in a story—that of the NGO

Eklavya and its far-reaching experiment with Kabir in rural and small-town
Madhya Pradesh. From 1991 to 1998, Eklavya hosted a manch—literally a
stage or platform—for singing Kabir and investigating his social-political
as well as his religious-spiritual significance. By studying the records of
this remarkable experiment, talking with people who were involved, and
participating in ongoing oral traditions, I was able to get a glimpse of how
Kabir folksingers and others in these settings dynamically create Kabir.
Kabir is uniquely situated among North Indian bhakti poets as a “plat-
form” for such dialogue. We would not be having quite this discussion
about Surdas, Mirabai, or Tulsidas. Among the major Hindi bhakti poets,
it is only Kabir who speaks out loudly against social inequality, abuse of
power, and dishonesty. He does share with Ravidas an iconic status among
Dalits and others with minimal economic power and “low” rank in India’s
caste hierarchy.3 And he shares with Mirabai great popularity among these
same groups, especially in Rajasthan.4 But only Kabir is famous as a social
critic. Only with Kabir do we find trenchant observation of social issues
coupled with evocation of profound inner transformation—an experience
that we can label inadequately as mystical or spiritual, that turns the habits
of mind and the structures of self “upside-down,” liberating the individual
from egocentric delusions and fears.
Through this story, we will encounter the rich discourses of Kabir sing-
ers, listeners, devotees, and fans, the people who continue to create the
oral tradition. It is a revelation to learn about the content and process of
their thought and debate. Along with a sampling of the discussions that
occurred in Eklavya’s Kabir manch, three singer-participants are profiled
at length, adding their vivid personalities and views to those of Prahlad
Singh Tipanya, who is featured in other chapters.
Eklavya and Its Foray into the Worlds of Kabir

Eklavya’s history goes back to the 1970s when a group of academics and
scientists from Delhi set out to create vital new ways of teaching science to
children in government schools beyond the metros. Existing science edu-
cation, they felt, was worse than dead, not only failing to teach but actu-
ally creating antipathy toward the learning process. One of the founders,
Vinod Raina, gave up a prestigious job in Delhi University. Others, like
my friends Anu Gupta and Arvind Sardana who have been with Eklavya
252 Bodies of Song
in Dewas since 1986, and C. N. Subramanium, the director of the orga-

nization when I arrived in 2002, could have confidently looked forward
to comfortable urban positions. Instead they moved to Madhya Pradesh
where they developed what would become a renowned science curriculum.
Historian Harbans Mukhia wrote about Eklavya in a 2002 news-
paper article, after the Madhya Pradesh state government terminated a
long-standing arrangement by which Eklavya had brought its science pro-
gram into government schools. Mukhia and others saw this termination
as a regrettable political move.
The group started working in 1972 under the rather prosaic name
of Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), until
ten years later when it acquired the present very evocative name
[Eklavya]. The idea attracted a large number of scientists, some of
them as eminent as M. S. Swaminathan, M. G. K. Menon, Yash Pal,
and many others teaching in the University of Delhi, who involved
themselves in the development of the programme. . . . The HSTP
and later Eklavya sought to develop the programme well within the
framework of the system of school education in Madhya Pradesh
and with the approval, cooperation and assistance of successive
Governments of the State at costs that were almost ridiculously low.
As they went along, they developed expertise in writing new kinds of
textbooks, training teachers through short term refresher courses,
publishing magazines for children and for teachers, and devising
tool kits at a fraction of prevailing costs. In course of time, a social
science component was also developed based upon the same prin-
ciple of proceeding from the familiar to the abstract rather than the
other way around. By 2001, the HSTP was operative in 1000 schools
in 15 districts and 100,000 children were its beneficiaries. The best
testimony to its success has been the excitement and joy the process
of learning has brought to the children over the past three decades.5
In 1982 the organization adopted the provocative name Eklavya, after

the jungle-dwelling tribal character in the Mahābhārata epic who, spurned
by the high-caste royal guru of archery, dedicates himself to a statue of the
guru. He teaches himself, practices independently, and becomes a greater
archer than the princes of the land. Perceived as an uppity Untouchable
and a threat to the social order, he is rewarded for his achievement by a
cruel command from the guru to whom he is unconditionally devoted:
“If you are my true disciple, cut off your right thumb.” With this com-
mand, the Brahmin military guru Dronacharya and his royal protégé
Arjuna intend to disable the brilliantly gifted forest-dweller, ensuring that
the status and power of the upper castes will not be threatened. Eklavya
complies, demonstrating his courage and devotion as well as the ruthless
self-preservation of caste and political power. In choosing this name for
their NGO, the founders wanted to highlight the potency of individual ini-
tiative and self-education, and the tragic denial of opportunity and waste of
talent under an oppressive hierarchical system. In a recent brochure, they
say that they intend to rewrite the ending of the story. In the new narrative
of democracy, Eklavya refuses to sacrifice his thumb: he now understands
and is willing to fight for his right to education.
Harbans Mukhia observes:
The group of scholars, like the Mahabharata lad Eklavya . . . opted

to pursue their search in near wilderness, away from the glare and
distractions of a metropolis and settled down in the small town of
Hoshangabad on the banks of the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh.
There they set out to get the children to generate knowledge for
themselves by putting the textbook aside for the moment and going
out in the neighbourhood, looking for special kinds of tree leaves,
stones, what not and then asking questions and seeking answers.
The questions led them to concepts, and the search for answers
to the scientific methods of observation, experimentation, analysis
and generalisation. They were to be trained in the critical method
of acquiring knowledge rather than in the passive acceptance of
knowledge generated by teachers. . . . In life too they would learn
the application of reason.
There was also another valuable principle implied in it. In the
great energy and resources expended in the pursuit of education
for the next generation, the poor should not have to satisfy their
quest with second rate, leftover education: what their children get
too should be good and worthwhile. (Mukhiya 2002)
In the 1980s Eklavya expanded its scope. Besides adding social sci-
ences, developing new textbooks, magazines, toolkits, and teacher train-
ing, they experimented beyond the bounds of formal education. The Kabir
work was one such experiment, based in communities and not tied to
schooling.
254 Bodies of Song
In Shabnam Virmani’s film In the Market Stands Kabir, Dinesh Sharma

describes Eklavya’s approach to Kabir as he understood it:
Dinesh Sharma (DS): We felt that those ideas of Kabir that are most needed
today haven’t been coming through—the ideas that are really relevant
today, and that attract people like us. The spiritual part isn’t so interest-
ing to us. We don’t oppose it either. We don’t say that it is not present
in Kabir-sāhab’s tradition or that Kabir-sāhab didn’t do that. . . . We’re
saying that there’s a need at this time to look at these [social and politi-
cal] things first. That’s the kind of work we are doing. We can consider
the other things later.
Shabnam Virmani (SV): What other things?
DS: Other things like yogic practice, spiritual things. They’re fine, and for
some people they may be first in importance. At that time the Ayodhya
Babri mosque conflict was in the air. Temple and mosque. The BJP
[political party] was highlighting this. These people, the mandalī mem-
bers, were being mobilized and incited. They were using them to join
mobs. We felt it was necessary to point out: You and the great tradition
you belong to are being used as pawns by the government and political
parties.
While the Kabir manch was connected to the longer history of Eklavya’s
commitments (as explained by R. N. Syag below), the political crisis that
Dinesh refers to added new urgency. Communal politics, hatred, and vio-
lence were on the rise. Hindu nationalist organizations were drumming
up anger against a sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya, which they fer-
vently declared stood on the actual birthplace of Lord Ram, an incarnation
of God and the hero of the vastly popular Rāmāyaṇa epic. They claimed
that a great temple to Ram had been destroyed in the sixteenth century by
a Muslim king, who had then ordered that a mosque be built over the rub-
ble. Appealing to deep-seated religious sentiments, they demanded that
the mosque be demolished and the temple rebuilt on that very spot. At the
same time their political party, the BJP, was making impressive electoral
gains at the state and national levels.
Throughout this campaign one heard the verses of the beloved
sixteenth-century Hindi Rāmāyaṇa poet Tulsidas being shouted in rallies.
Cries of “victory to Ram” and to Hanuman, his mighty devotee in the form
of a divine monkey, rang out. Bhajans and pseudo-bhajans with new texts
like Rāmjī kī senā chalī (Ramji’s army is on the march) and Mandir wahīṇ
banāyenge (We’ll build the temple on that very spot) were blasted over loud-
speakers, disseminated on cassettes and discs, and eventually posted on
the internet. People’s bhakti—their religious devotion, their love of Ram,
the Rāmāyaṇa story, and Tulsidas’s beautiful Hindi poetry—were effec-
tively channeled into the campaign. Ram’s warrior nature was emphasized
rather than his tender and compassionate side: he was a hero who fought
and destroyed the demon race (Kapur 1993). In the speeches, audios, and
videos produced by the movement, demons were equated again and again
with Muslims and Muslim sympathizers (Hess 1994a).
Many secularist and anticommunal groups were considering how
to counter this successful appropriation of religious imagery, poetry,
and emotion. Kabir, the mystical poet who criticized the follies of both
Hindus and Muslims and whose identity partook of both traditions,
was an obvious ally. Besides providing a counterforce to communalism,
Kabir was an apt spokesman for other Eklavya values: the critique of
caste and superstition, the importance of testing things with your own
experience, questioning authority, and affirming human equality and
dignity.
Most important, Kabir already had a vibrant presence in the country-
side in the form of bhajan mandalīs, groups that met regularly to sing his
verses. These groups would sing in a lively folk style with a few instru-
ments. They were often initiates of the Kabir Panth (sect), which regarded
Kabir as the supreme guru, or even as God. Most of Kabir’s followers were
of the lower classes and oppressed castes.
Dr. R. N. Syag was the director of Eklavya’s Dewas office in the 1990s.
Syag-bhāī (brother), as everyone calls him, has an open, friendly face, a
shock of white hair, and a habit of ending many sentences with a form of
Hindi hai-nā? meaning, “isn’t it so?” or “right?” He says hai-nā while con-
necting with his conversation partner’s eyes—a habit of inviting dialogue.
Syag-bhāī explained the importance of working with community groups
that had a life of their own:6
R. N. Syag (RNS): Highly educated people like us can talk about democracy
and civil society. But in the traditional society of the village, people are
identified by caste. In that society you have to think: Where can I sit
down? Or if you’re a woman: How should I behave? Given that identi-
ties are formed around caste and gender, how do you begin to do some-
thing in a village? You can’t do it in an academic way, can you? If you
want to talk to people, there are boundaries. There are distances. There
256 Bodies of Song
Figure 6.1. R. N. Syag, during our car conversation presented in chapters 6 and
8. Photo by Shabnam Virmani.
is untouchability. When we realized that these Kabir bhajan mandalīs

existed, we thought that they provided a very good community-based
institution. We could work with them. We could also strengthen them.
The mandalīs arose spontaneously. No NGO created them, no govern-

ment created them. They were filling people’s real needs and aspira-
tions. Only then would they survive—right? We saw that men would
labor all day, and then at night they would sit and sing so beautifully,
and they would get so refreshed. Sometimes they would sing all night
and go straight to work in the morning. What was going on here? We
began to meet and make friends with them.
Another thing was that we came out of a background of science educa-
tion. Children learned about science and rational thinking in school.
But at home in the village, everything was traditional. The literacy
rate was low all through the country. We were creating written mate-
rials, but science education can only spread when literacy rates are
higher. We had started an All-India People’s Science Network. In
1987 there were five jātas [traveling educational groups that used
music, theater, exhibits, and so on] moving from five corners of the
country, raising scientific awareness. There were different emphases
in different places. Here in M.P., we were educating people about
the [1982] Bhopal gas tragedy, about Union Carbide, multinationals,
and so on.
Linda Hess (LH): What’s the connection between scientific awareness
and Kabir?
RNS: Why are there so many differences between human beings? Why
is there untouchability? Didn’t Kabir teach us to ask questions? Kabir
said, “One who searches will find.” That search is what scientists do.
Kabir had cultural roots in the community. Where people’s lives were
difficult, where there was a need for knowledge and education, we
thought Kabir could be a medium. Our first contact was Narayanji. We
met him in a bus, carrying his tambūrā. We went to his village, attended
a performance, got to know people. This was sometime in 1990.
LH: The conflict over the Babri mosque was intense then. Was the problem
of communalism also in your minds?
RNS: It was. But if we went into the villages talking about nonlocal
things—communalism, political parties—it wouldn’t have much
meaning. Kabir talked about hypocrisy in all religions, and he made
our common humanity a central value. So he provided a good medium
to discuss these things.7 We were a little concerned about whether his
attacking religion, criticizing Islam and Hinduism, would prevent peo-
ple from joining us. But we felt that his appeal to common humanity
was the main point, and we emphasized that his criticism was directed
against anything that destroyed that human feeling.
The Kabir Manch: An Overview

Having decided to delve into local Kabir culture, Eklavya workers collected
books and educated themselves about Kabir’s poetry and place in history.
Dinesh Sharma did much of the groundwork, moving among villages,
collecting lists of bhajan mandalīs, and holding preliminary sessions.
They named the project the Kabīr bhajan evam vichār manch. A manch
is a stage—literally a place of performance and figuratively a platform or
space for expressing ideas. Vichār means idea or thought. Doing vichār
258 Bodies of Song
means thinking, discussing. So it was a platform for singing and discuss-

ing Kabir. On July 2, 1991, the manch was officially inaugurated. Its central
activity was a gathering on the second of every month at the Eklavya office
in Dewas. Many groups came. They sang, talked, and drank tea all night.
Such bhajan sessions are not unusual in the countryside. What was
special about Eklavya’s program was the vichār component. Along with
singing, participants were encouraged to discuss the meanings of Kabir’s
bhajans: to raise questions, seek answers, debate points of disagreement,
and relate the content of the songs to their daily lives—the conditions of
work, society, family, and so on. This was not something they were used to
doing. They usually sang for pleasure and release, the pure joy of singing.
You need only to sit with a village mandalī, seeing how their enthusiasm
and enjoyment build over hours of singing, to appreciate why they like to
sing. This enjoyment did not require discussion of meanings; in fact such
discussion was likely to hinder the flow of feeling.8
Another reason why discussing the meaning of Kabir was awkward at
first was that the authority to interpret and preach was usually ceded to the
Kabir Panth gurus or mahants. Before them, ordinary people kept quiet.
Most of the singers had limited formal education. Some were illiterate.
Many had dropped out in primary or middle school. Only a few had been
to high school or college. Often, when asked to talk about the meaning
of a bhajan he had just sung, a singer would just repeat the words. What
more was there to explain? But even this presentation of the words without
music had an impact, focusing attention on the content and preparing the
way for more probing conversations.
Organizers constantly conveyed the message that the singers of Kabir had
every right to think and talk about the meanings of Kabir. Their ideas were
elicited and respected. Soon they warmed to the format, discussing and debat-
ing more freely. Of course singing was always more fun, more physically and
emotionally satisfying, than talking. But discussion gradually flourished.
Dinesh Sharma kept extensive documentation of the program: notes
and reflections on what happened, audiotapes, press clippings, and corre-
spondence. Sometimes he described his own experience in the logbooks,
as in this 1992 note on how it all began:9 “In 1990, while working on a
literacy campaign, I came into contact with many Kabir bhajan mandalīs
in villages. At the same time I started reading books by and about Kabir,
and I discovered that his ideas were quite revolutionary.” Dinesh found
Kabir proclaiming social equality and calling for justice. He went to his
first bhajan program in Tonk Khurd village at the home of Fakirchand—a
Figure 6.2. Dinesh Sharma, who organized and documented the Kabir manch
with the NGO Eklavya, holds a picture of the great Dalit anticaste leader
B. R. Ambedkar. Photo by Shabnam Virmani.
member of the sweeper caste. For the first time in his life Dinesh, a
Brahmin, entered an “untouchable” home. On another occasion, in the
same home, he witnessed his first chaukā āratī—the core ritual of the
Kabir Panth (about which we will hear a great deal in the next chapter). He
collected information on Kabir bhajan mandalīs in the area. “I got many
names and addresses, but one name was on every tongue: Prahlad Singh
Tipanya.” So we know that even in 1990, Prahladji was recognized as the
most outstanding local singer.
After the first meeting in July 1991, Dinesh sent a letter to the leaders
of many mandalīs:
Namaste to all the mandalī members.

We met on 2 July in Dewas. Some friends suggested that, along
with singing Kabir bhajans, we should try to spread the bhajans and
Kabir’s thought very widely, and that we should arrange various edu-
cational and social activities for the public. The Kabīr bhajan evam
vichār manch was formed with these aims:
260 Bodies of Song
* To bring together Kabir bhajan mandalīs so that all could sing and
listen.
* To understand and propagate Kabir’s ideas.
* To organize Kabir festivals and seminars.
* To encourage activities related to religious tolerance, brotherhood,
social and educational change.
Please let all your members know about this manch.
In the first two years there was a flurry of activity including perfor-
mances, discussions, seminars, new youth mandalīs, and children’s activi-
ties. They collected books on Kabir and Ambedkar and set up libraries
in villages. They created a play using Kabir bhajans and sākhīs—some
performers sang while others acted out a play highlighting issues like
casteism, superstition, double standards, excessive drinking, and literacy.
A small book of socially conscious bhajan texts with an introduction about
Kabir’s life and thought was published and sold for two rupees. Two audio-
cassettes featuring manch singers went on sale for twenty-five rupees each.
They did a brisk business, and the reputation of the Malwa Kabir mandalīs
began to spread.
Syag-bhāī further describes participants and processes in the manch:
The Kabir mandalīs already existed. They normally got together

to sing in their own neighborhoods every week or two. As to
caste—mostly they were Balais, an SC community. But there were
others too, some OBCs, some of general castes.10 There were a few
women, not many.
At first they felt there should be a religious atmosphere. There
should be a sacred image of Kabir, a disciplined program, no
arguments. I said—if Kabir came and saw this program, what
would he think? He was the sort of person who liked to get into
discussions—right? So if we’re doing this in his name, how about
trying an experiment? Let’s encourage people to have a discus-
sion. We’ll have it in one of the rooms of our office, and everyone
will sit on the floor, with no sacred image of Kabir, no worship or
ritual.
So that’s what we did. Tipanyaji and Narayanji were the first
ones who got into singing and then discussing the bhajans. People
liked it and more joined in. Word spread and the numbers kept
increasing.
People had notebooks with bhajans written in them, and we
selected some to publish in inexpensive booklets. We chose bha-
jans that would help to advance this kind of discussion. We didn’t
pick out the ones about devotion to the guru and that sort of thing.
We took bhajans about caste, superstition, hypocrisy. For instance,
there’s a song that says you do rituals for your parents when they’re
dead but don’t care for them while they’re alive. That type of thing.
A lot more people started coming, and Tipanyaji’s first cassette was
produced.
One booklet had an introduction written by Prakash Kant, a
very insightful and educated person. A lot of people objected to it
because it described Kabir as a human being, no miracles. How
could Kabir-sāhib be born from anybody’s womb? How could
Kabir-sāhib die? They saw Kabir in a different way. They had reli-
gious faith that wouldn’t change in one meeting, or ten meetings.
We would just calmly talk about it. We put up some exhibitions,
distributed information, showed how people came to believe things
that weren’t necessarily true. We asked: Where do these misconcep-
tions come from? How are they created?
The manch wasn’t homogeneous. Some people were educated.
Some singers were schoolteachers who had studied science, history,
social science. Tipanyaji was one of those. There were some college
students. . . . But the majority of participants had little education
and had a lot of faith in their traditions. I emphasized that this was
a dialogue. If somebody says something that you don’t like, let him
speak. Right? This is the meaning of dialogue, isn’t it? If someone
says something you disagree with, that’s what he’s been taught, in
his family, in his village. It isn’t a matter of blame. We used to say
this again and again. If someone thinks in a different way from you,
still respect him as a human being. Right? What was his learning
process? How did he arrive at this understanding?
We didn’t do exhaustive research or try to relate to everything
about Kabir. We promoted those aspects which inspired us, and we
left other aspects alone. If someone liked to touch people’s feet as
a sign of respect, that was OK. It wasn’t an issue. But nobody was
told, “You have to touch so-and-so’s feet.” The main thing was to
have dialogue.
262 Bodies of Song
The Hindi daily newspaper Naī Duniyā carried a story on the meeting
that took place on February 2, 1992:
Twenty-five men and fifteen women were present. They discussed

caste, untouchability, various kinds of social conflict in their vil-
lages. Two points emerged most clearly:
1. If we really want people in society to follow Kabir’s ideas, we’ll

have to do more than sing bhajans. To make these ideas concrete,
we must develop solid projects in the villages.
2. Along with Kabir, we should study the ideas of Ambedkar. At the
end of the meeting, Syag-bhāī spoke about Ambedkar’s life and
thought.
B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) was the great leader of the struggle against

untouchability and caste oppression in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. A member of the despised mahār caste, by a series of near-miraculous
circumstances he got educational opportunities that led to his earning a
Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in New York and a law
degree in London. Returning to India, he fought unrelentingly for the
human rights of untouchables and against the institutions of caste, ulti-
mately becoming free India’s first law minister and the chief architect of
the Indian constitution. In October 1956, just two months before his death,
he converted to Buddhism in a great public ceremony, leading a movement
in which millions of Dalits (as many members of the downtrodden castes
came to call themselves) have become Buddhists, guided by Ambedkar’s
writings on the political, social, spiritual, and intellectual suitability of that
religion to their aspirations. Ambedkar’s parents were members of the
Kabir Panth. He sometimes said that he had three gurus: Kabir, Jyotirao
Phule (a Maharashtrian who fought against caste in the nineteenth cen-
tury), and the Buddhist monk who presided at his conversion ceremony.
In 1992, Eklavya started an Ambedkar manch in Dewas, a smaller forum
that ran parallel to the Kabir manch for two years. Some of the singers
attended both; many attended only the Kabir manch.
Here is an example of a dialogue that took place at the Kabir forum,
transcribed from an audiotape of the meeting on February 2, 1992.
Ramprasad, Narayanji, and Girdharji are members of singing groups;
Syag-bhāī and Dinesh work with Eklavya.
Ramprasad Golavatiya sang Pandit vād vade so jhūṭha.11

Syag-bhāī: For the last 600 years mandalīs have been singing Kabir
bhajans. And during the same period, Kabir has come to be sur-
rounded by rituals and pomp. This is because Kabir’s spiritual
bhajans are always sung while his social bhajans remain hidden.
Narayanji: Since coming to the Kabir manch, we’ve begun to sing
the social bhajans more, because people here like them. In the
programs where Panth gurus preside, the spiritual ones are
given more prominence. Traditionally you start with homage to
the guru. Then chaukā āratī (ritual) bhajans, then more about
the guru’s power, rekhtā12 about the nature of the guru and the
individual soul, then bhajans that have to be sung at dawn. Like
that the entire night passes. After coming here, I’ve been freed
from many delusions.
Girdhariji: Here we have open discussion. In those programs we
have to observe a protocol around the guru. We can’t ask ques-
tions or discuss anything.
Dinesh: In his own time, when Kabir saw social problems and felt
the need for social change, he expressed those ideas in his bha-
jans. If we feel moved by Kabir’s philosophy, we should look
around and consider the needs of our society today. We should
discuss and spread Kabir’s social ideas.
Syag-bhāī: Along with Kabir we should discuss and spread the ideas
of Dr. Ambedkar, because Dr. Ambedkar did tremendous work
for the awakening of the Dalit community. In our society, even
after fifty years of independence, we still have illiteracy, poverty,
hunger, unemployment.
Ramprasad Golavatiya: To raise consciousness, we can sing and do
street theater.
Narayanji: Syag-bhāī, we who are in the Kabir manch need to do
some work out in the real world. If we just sit here and have
discussions, nothing will happen.
Syag-bhāī: All movements and projects start with ideas. Discussing
ideas brings people together. Then they can raise their voices in
the world.
As a title for the book of bhajan texts that they were publishing, partici-
pants chose a line from one of Kabir’s couplets: kabīrā soī pīr hai jo jāne par
pīr. The line plays on two meanings of pīr. The first pīr refers to the Sufi
(Muslim mystical) equivalent of guru, a wise teacher or spiritual master.
264 Bodies of Song
The second meaning of pīr is pain or suffering. So the line means, “Kabir
says, the true teacher is one who feels others’ pain.” The newspaper Naī
Duniyā carried a review written by a friend of the manch:
India’s medieval bhakti movement was a social and cultural phe-

nomenon that raised a resounding voice against the social igno-
rance of the times. . . . The actions that saint-poets of the bhakti
period adopted to change society, and the poetry they composed,
are still relevant today. Kabir had a unique place in the bhakti
movement. The bhajans and dohās he composed are still on peo-
ple’s tongues in villages, and the tradition of singing his songs in
groups has continued for many generations. . . . In the first fifteen
pages of this booklet, Prakash Kant has written an essay on the
social, political, and religious conditions in Kabir’s time. He dem-
onstrates that the bhakti movement was born from contemporary
social and religious circumstances. In every society, people arise
to speak against prevailing falsehood and injustice. Their efforts
come together to begin the process of social change. . . . If we
look at Kabir’s bhajans and dohās, we will see that on one hand
he spoke about social transformation, while on the other hand he
presented the spiritual aspect of life. In this booklet, most of the
twenty bhajans speak out against the orthodoxies that constrict
society.13
Some faithful devotees of the Kabir Panth objected to Prakash Kant’s

introduction, which described Kabir as a human being who was born and
died in the usual human ways. They believed Kabir was a divine avatar,
who manifested himself as a baby on a lotus in a pond, and whose life on
earth was replete with miracles. Because of their objections, the introduc-
tion was omitted in later editions.
After the demolition of the Babri mosque and subsequent communal
mayhem and murder across northern and western India, many groups
organized to resist the waves of hatred and violence. The Uttar Pradesh
state government sponsored a Sadbhāv Yātrā (Goodwill Journey) “to mobi-
lize the public against communalism, spread the message of tolerance,
peace, and compassion, and revive the spirit of communal harmony and
devotion preached long ago by the sant poet Kabir.”14 They asked Eklavya to
send mandalīs to join the yātrā, whose highlight was a weeklong traveling
cultural program led by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA).
A caravan of actors, writers, speakers, and singers moved along the roads
from Varanasi to Magahar, the sites of Kabir’s birth and death. Journalist
Akhilesh Dikshit “Dipu” almost ecstatically describes the impact of these
artists—their exuberance, simplicity and sincerity; their continuous sing-
ing through eight days of travel; the beauty of the tunes combined with the
power of the words. Malwa’s ever-popular song Zarā halke gāḍī hānko—
“Move your cart along lightly”—became an anthem, with everyone joining
in again and again as they walked. Dikshit observes: “The performance
of the Dewas manch artists released a flow of Kabir poetry in this eastern
region that will remain fresh for years to come” (Dikshit 1993).
About midway through the eight-year duration of the manch, Eklavya
devised a questionnaire to get information on the ages, castes, and educa-
tion of participants, as well as the history of each mandalī. Some of the
questionnaires were lost, but in 2002 we were able to find fifty-eight of
them, each representing one mandalī. The great majority of participants
list their caste as Balai (also called Balahi)—in Malwa a Dalit caste with
relatively high status among the Dalits (who have their own hierarchies).15
A scattering of other castes are listed, including Chamar, Raidas, Goswamy,
Rajput, Jat, Darzi, Chaudari, and Khati. When asked their occupation,
most say mazdurī (labor) or khetī (farming). A few say they are shopkeep-
ers, handymen, or teachers (dukān, mistrī, paḍhāī). Their ages range from
the twenties to the fifties, with the occasional teenager. Under “education,”
we see notations like “3rd,” “5th,” or “7th” (indicating the highest grade
completed), and sometimes nahīṇ (none). Many mandalīs say that they
have been functioning for a long time, ten to thirty years, and that such
singing is traditional in their families. Some newer ones cite Eklavya’s
Kabir manch as their inspiration for starting. A few mention the support
of Prahlad Singh Tipanya and Narayan Singh Delmiya. One new group
says it was inspired by Tipanyaji’s cassettes. The groups covered by the
questionnaires are 100 percent male. I was told that a female mandalī occa-
sionally appeared at the Kabir manch, and I have met some women who
sing Kabir. But it is clear that Kabir singing in Malwa is almost exclusively
a male culture.
Meetings on the second of the month continued until 1998. A 1995 bro-
chure stated that over 500 mandalīs had been involved and that monthly
programs were being held in three villages as well as in Dewas. In 1993
Eklavya received a modest grant from the Indian Council of Historical
Research to support documentation and text collection. Thousands of bha-
jans were typed up from the handwritten notebooks of mandalī members.
266 Bodies of Song
In cases where singers were unlettered, or old and frail, special efforts
were made to transcribe songs from their oral presentation. Eklavya pro-
duced a lengthy report in 1999, with a historical introduction in English
and an account of the Kabir manch’s activities in Hindi, followed by a col-
lection of bhajan texts transcribed from the Malwa oral tradition, includ-
ing notes and appendices. As a title for this report, they used the first line
of a Kabir couplet:

It was interesting for me to discover, when I searched for the rest of the
sākhī, that the second line changes the point of view to an interior one:
kaṭuk shabda kabīr ke, sun to āg lag jāī

gyānī to vāṇ magan bhayā, agyānī jal jāī

The wise are completely immersed.
The ignorant burn.
Magan, translated here as “immersed,” usually refers to total absorption

in meditation or devotional love. It could be associated with the coolness
of inner peace which, in the opening of this chapter, was described as
opposed to the fiery struggle against injustice. In two short lines this sākhī
welds fiery intensity with calm concentration. Only the ignorant, those
who miss the point, burn up.
Other Urban Activists Who Became

Involved in the Manch
Kabir bhajan mandalīs, mostly but not entirely rural, comprised the core
of Eklavya’s Kabir manch. In addition, city people from Indore, Dewas,
and Ujjain, who were not singers or religious devotees of Kabir and who
tended to be highly educated, were also drawn to the monthly meet-
ings. These were people who had affinities with Eklavya and with Kabir.
Whether artists, intellectuals, NGO workers, or activists in other arenas,
they were interested in strengthening secularism, reducing inequality, and

addressing injustices that affected the least powerful and privileged ele-
ments of society—seen through the lenses of caste, class, gender, religion,
ethnicity, access to education, and so on. For example, there was Prakash
Kant, an educator of Dewas who wrote the introduction to the first edition
of the published bhajan collection, Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr.16 There was
Kiran Sahni, an Indore theater director who later put up a production of a
famous Hindi play on Kabir.17
Suresh Patel of Indore was an officer of the Cotton Corporation of
India, a government agency under the Ministry of Textiles. Inspired by
Eklavya’s manch, Suresh embarked on a sustained effort to enlist the power
of Kabir’s words and music in projects that would support and strengthen
people at the lower ends of the economic and social scale. He founded
an NGO called Kabīr jan vikās samuh—Kabir’s Community for People’s
Development. When I met him in 2002, he took me to see two current
projects. The first was a sort of preschool for children of varying ages who
had never gone to school:
[From my notebook, August 3, 2002]

We visit a very poor settlement of Maharashtrian ādivāsīs [“tribal”
people who had come to the city in search of work]. The children
used to be sent out all day to collect plastic bags from the street to be
sold by the kilo. Three years ago they started this program to prepare
kids to enter government schools. They had to persuade the parents,
who wanted the kids to earn money. Now they have a shabby little
room with water puddled at one end, but it’s clean, and the kids
look sparkling. Volunteers from inside and outside the community
started teaching the kids, both content and discipline. In three years,
150 kids who were not in school have entered government schools.
They’re about to start a new batch. A spirited woman leader talked to
us, gesturing vigorously. The kids smiled broadly and talked readily.
The other project was an after-school gathering place for children in a

lower-middle-class neighborhood, where Kabir’s poetry and songs were
used to inspire educational activities. It was a small but clean and bright
space, with art projects on the walls featuring lines from Kabir. They held
a bhajan program the day I came. Narayanji joined Tarasingh Dodve, an
excellent singer from Indore, and Arun Goyal, a vivacious young man with
268 Bodies of Song
a fine voice who had come from his village for this program. Along with
Suresh’s coworkers, about twenty children and a few guests were present.
They sang songs that emphasized social issues, touching on religious
delusions, hypocrisy, and social inequality. The program did not have a
drearily didactic or politically doctrinaire feeling. Everyone plunged into
the joy of music, generating experiences that were both personal and
social. After three hours, I wrote in my notebook:
Amazing explosion of selfless, joyful, mutually supportive singing,

especially between Arun and Narayanji, younger and older, cascades
of love and joy between them. A 13-year-old boy played dholak. [He
turned out to be Tarasingh’s son.] They threw the song verses like a
ball between them, each smiling affectionately as the other picked
it up, joining forces to build the energy ever higher. Narayanji got
up and danced—the first time I ever saw that. The children looked
happy and talked easily. When asked to sing, several stood up and
sang Kabir dohās without hesitation.
Suresh Patel had a doctorate in Hindi literature. Like many of the

highly educated artists, intellectuals, and activists I met in Malwa, and
unlike many of my friends in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, he spoke
with me in Hindi, not English. The following translated excerpts are from
a filmed interview conducted by Shabnam Virmani.18 They are abridged
and presented here in a continuous form.
I grew up in a village near Jabalpur [eastern Madhya Pradesh], where

I saw poverty, discrimination, untouchability, hypocrisy. And I saw
how human dignity arises even in the worst circumstances. It was a
majority ādivāsī (indigenous) area. The women had barely enough
clothing to cover their bodies. When I saw all this in childhood,
I began to think about it. In Tagar village, where my maternal grand-
father lived, there were traditions of both folk and classical music.
There were always Kabir bhajans and satsangs going on. I saw how
people worked together and helped each other as they participated
in Kabir satsangs. Some Kabir Panth sadhus came there. I found
them different from other sadhus—not so much hypocrisy.
Later when I finished my education, I took a job with the Cotton
Corporation of India and came over to this side, Malwa [western
Madhya Pradesh]. Again I noticed that the cotton farmers hardly

had any clothes to wear, though they were providing clothes for the
whole world. I was moved to try to understand this. At that time
I felt very close to Kabir, who 600 years earlier was facing these
same things—hypocrisy, superstition, untouchability, poverty,
exploitation, cruelty.
Then I heard that Eklavya had started a manch in Dewas, with
bhajans and discussions. I wanted to organize something like that
in Tagar too. I met Syag-bhāī, Dinesh Sharma, Prakash Kant, and
they said they could send a group. Prahlad Singh Tipanyaji came
with his mandalī. These were very interior villages. We had a
three-day program, everyone was excited. The girls were drawing
pictures, writing sākhīs on the walls. They collected money among
themselves. Prakash Kantji came. Intellectuals, journalists came.
People from other villages heard it was going on and they came.
We felt that Kabir-sāhib’s devotional bhajans were very well
known, whereas his bhajans about social change and hypocrisy, and
his own ways of attacking these things, were little known and rarely
sung. Even the bhajans that focused on social issues were somehow
changed, turned into something else. Kabir himself was becoming
a kind of god, and the full force of his words was being lost. It suited
some people to promote that kind of thing, it was convenient for
them, so they made sure those bhajans were sung and emphasized.
Like this one—
In seven continents and nine world-divisions

no one is as great as the guru.
The creator can fail,
but the guru always succeeds.
The people who came regularly on the second of each month—

mostly they just wanted to sing their bhajans. The majority were
poor and from Dalit groups. In Eklavya there was an atmosphere
of equality. Everyone ate together, sang and discussed together,
raised questions. Everyone had the right to speak. They didn’t find
these values in their villages or in the larger society. Some mandalīs
were invited to various places to support communal harmony and
social awakening. They went on All India Radio and Doordarshan
and became more widely known. But the biggest break was with
270 Bodies of Song
Tipanyaji’s first cassette, Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr. We stayed in
contact after he visited Jabalpur and we encouraged him to get his
bhajans into the market. He was inexperienced, and so were we.
The company Sonotek in Jabalpur—they said it’s nice, but who will
listen to it? We said we were sure about the power of Kabir’s songs,
though we were also a little worried, since the message is so deep.
kabīr kī bānī aṭpaṭi, jhaṭpaṭ lakhi na jāy

Jo jan jhatpat lakhi le, vākī khaṭpaṭ hī mit jāy.
Kabir’s words are tricky, quite hard to get quickly,
but if you see quickly, duplicity’s gone!
[The humor of the verse depends on the rhyming sounds of three

words translated as tricky, quickly, duplicity—aṭpaṭi, jhaṭpaṭ, khaṭpaṭ.]
But I had confidence people would listen to it. After the cas-
sette came out, the Sonotek guys told me their studio’s fortunes
were made from it. The demand just kept growing. Who could
have guessed? A whole series of results came out of this cassette.
Dr. Kapil Tiwari organized programs all over M.P.19 And things kept
developing. Until then nobody was paying any attention to Kabir,
aside from the Kabir Panth.
[The camera goes to a picture of Kabir on the wall.] A special
feature of this picture is that he is working. He dedicated his life to
the culture of work. Here his whole attention (dhyān) is on his work.
He’s wearing little clothing and concentrating fully on his work. I
find this very suitable to Kabir-sāhib. He was living and working
among the people, talking with them, eating and drinking with
them, sharing all their sorrows and struggles, and composing his
poetry. [This description is in implicit contrast with the usual Kabir
Panthi representation of Kabir, seated as a great guru, with a lot of
clothing, a tall pointed hat, and a hand raised in formal teaching
gesture associated with sages and saints.]
Suresh, his close coworker Chhotu Bharti, and others have continued
to link the voice of Kabir with their efforts to support people in the quest
for equality, dignity, and equal opportunity. Over the years we have met a
number of times—in Indore, in Suresh’s ancestral village Tagar, and in
Khandwa, a college town where we joined faculty members in a public
forum on Kabir. I had a habit of questioning Suresh and Chhotu about

“inside” and “outside.” I would say: Kabir taught us to speak out about the
pain and injustice in society, but he also taught us to investigate ourselves,
to follow some sādhanā (spiritual practice), to find a place of profound awak-
ening within. Was it acceptable—was it true to Kabir—to emphasize the
first part and ignore the second? Taking my question seriously, for a while
Suresh and one of his colleagues tried practicing yoga and meditation. But
eventually Suresh commented that I overemphasized the “inner” part.
I often remember the reply of Chhotu when asked what he felt was the
most important teaching of Kabir. Without hesitation, he replied, “There
is a great power hidden inside of everyone. We should find that power!”
Then he and Suresh added, almost in chorus, “But we won’t achieve this
just by singing. We must do concrete work.”
The hidden power Chhotu refers to is usually understood as the pres-
ence in everyone of the supreme reality, which reveals itself poetically in
images of boundless sound and light, and which makes all bodies and all
persons absolutely equal. Countless Kabir poems express this:
As oil is in a sesame seed,

as fire is in flint,
your lord is in you.
Wake up if you can.
***
What are you searching for, dear friend?

What are you running after, dear friend?
In every body, Ramji speaks.
In every body, the beloved speaks.20
***
Kabir says, what have you lost? What are you seeking?
The blind don’t see. Light is blazing in your body.21
***
Wherever I look, nothing is empty, nothing is lacking.

This body is filled with light.22
***
272 Bodies of Song
Oh bird, my friend,
why do you wander
In the city of your body
is the sacred sound,
in your own green garden
is the holy name.
Oh bird, my friend,
you’re sitting in the dark.
In the temple of your body
the light shines,
the guru’s teaching gleams.
Why do you wander
from forest to forest?23
For many listeners these lines point to an inner spiritual awakening,

often implying the necessity of a guru to show the way. For Chhotu, “Your
lord is in you, wake up if you can,” resonates as a political inspiration. The
light that blazes within the body signifies not only enlightenment in the
spiritual sense, but power.
From our first conversation, in July 2002, Suresh and Chhotu showed
how an orientation toward social struggle and service produced a certain
consistent way of reading Kabir. With my interest in inner transformation,
I would consistently point to the other side.
LH: Was Kabir mainly concerned with reforming society, or was he more
interested in the spiritual side?
Suresh Patel (SP): Kabir was interested in the common people. He showed
a way that was simple and open to all, not just the elite.
When Suresh asked why I was interested in Kabir, I touched on various

points, emphasizing my attraction to Kabir’s fearlessness.
SP: How does a person get free of fears? Why are people fearful? Because
they have no security, no money, no education, no legal rights. They
have poor health, both physical and mental. We can bring them to fear-
lessness by changing these things.
LH: But even when we have education, rights, money, and all the rest, we
are still not free from fear. Right? (to Chhotu) How can we transform
our condition from fearfulness to fearlessness?
Chhotu: We need to recognize ourselves. When we recognize the strength
(tākat) within ourselves, we become less and less afraid.
Scenes from the Manch

Though I wasn’t present at these events in the 1990s, I could imagine
them on the basis of Eklavya’s logs and audio recordings, my later con-
versations with participants, and my many experiences with Kabir sing-
ers. Listening to ten-year-old tapes, I reflected on the sheer numbers of
songs that the singers knew. Song after song, poetic verse after verse, all
through the night, with the vigorous beats of the dholak, the ring of cym-
bals, the clear plucking and strumming of tambūrā strings, the single and
combined male voices, some melodious, some rough—the room and the
people in it were enveloped in Kabir. Together, in mind and body, they pos-
sessed immeasurable knowledge of Kabir.
Each meeting began with a bhajan by a group that had been chosen to
lead off, after which all present would introduce themselves. Then each
group would get a chance to sing, a leader from the mandalī would be
asked to comment, and general discussion could follow. Though the pro-
gram continued from 9 p.m. to dawn, often there was time for only one
bhajan from each of the many groups that showed up.
In a yellowing register one can read Dinesh’s records of the first year,
with notes on each monthly meeting, written swiftly as the meeting was
going on. The second gathering, on August 2, 1991, was summarized
like this:
Eighteen mandalīs sang one bhajan each and were asked to say some-
thing about the meaning. We found that most of the mandalīs could
not explain the full meaning of a bhajan. They all benefited from
the discussion in which they heard other people’s ideas about the
meaning.
As a goal for future programs, they said that people of all castes
should sit together and discuss social problems such as casteism,
untouchability, etc. Other topics that they wanted to take up were:
274 Bodies of Song
• History of Kabir Panth.

• Chaukā āratī ritual. Difference between two traditions of Kabir
panth—one gives great importance to chaukā while the other
doesn’t. Why? Some say Kabir opposed chaukā āratī but later it
became a means of involving people in Kabir programs.
• Plan to produce cassettes and booklets.
• Why are there no women participants here?
On September 9, 1991, they took up meanings of words and concepts

as well as questions about Kabir’s life:
What are the five tattvas (elements) and three guṇas (qualities) that
Kabir often mentions? What is an avadhūt (the wanderer whom
Kabir addresses in many songs)? What is the difference between
guru and satguru (teacher and true teacher)? Between ātmā and
paramātmā (the individual divine spirit and the supreme divine
spirit)? What is the importance of satsang (good company/spiritual
companionship)? What are the deeper meanings of alakh (unseen)
and adbhūt (wondrous)? What happened in Kabir’s own life? What
kind of person was Ramanand (believed to be Kabir’s guru)? Why
did Kabir speak disrespectfully of Ramanand in one song? [paren-
theses added by LH]
In one entry, Dinesh made a list of verses that challenged and taunted
Brahmins, a second list showing how Muslim clerics were similarly chal-
lenged, and a third giving examples of songs devoted to the guru’s greatness.
The last type, guru mahimā, was always cited by Eklavya workers as the sort of
thing they were trying to get away from, preferring to emphasize Kabir’s radi-
cal social thought and anti-authoritarian spirit. For them the constant litanies
of homage to the guru represented the hold of traditional religion with its hier-
archical structures, which tended to keep people passive and subordinated.
In an early meeting of the manch, Hiralal Sisodiya sang the well-known
Santo dekhat jag baurānā (translation in Hess and Singh 2002, 3–4), then
commented on it:
In this bhajan Kabir says, look, brother, these beliefs we hold on

to are false. They have us all tangled up. If we get together, we can
break through them—beliefs about temples, monasteries, heavy
books, Puranas, Shastras. We keep these conservative traditions,
we say that this is our tradition, but it’s not true. All these things
have been made by human beings. Nobody has these traditions
in them when they’re born. If you’re born in a Hindu house, you
become a Hindu. If you’re born in a low-caste house, they call you
low caste. And we go around with these orthodoxies loaded on our
backs. The religions [he alternates between dharma and mazahab,
Hindu and Muslim terms for religion] go on telling us we have to
do rituals, idol-worship, pilgrimage, fasts, we have to put marks on
our arms and foreheads, follow rules. Like this, they deceive people.
We should be free from these rules. Human beings naturally want
to be free.
Kabir also says that if we are really human, we won’t harm other
creatures. The sants made a strong point about violence. As the
divine spirit is in you, so it is also in other creatures. Just as you
are conscious, they are conscious. Just as a light is burning within
you, it is burning within them. If they are going to die, let them die
by themselves, don’t kill them. Many commit violence to fill their
stomachs or to please their tongues. There are lots of other foods in
the world, fruits and vegetables. Why do we have to kill in order to
eat? Humans didn’t give them [animals] life and don’t have the right
to take their lives. We shouldn’t even kill insects. Kabir said:
Don’t torment a living being, we all share one breath.

Though you hear a thousand scriptures, you won’t get free of
that death.
After the first six months, Dinesh wrote enthusiastically of a change in

the gatherings:
Now it seems the people themselves have taken up leadership of the

activities, without any formalities. Forgetting differences between
high and low, rich and poor, laborer and employer, and other social
constructions, they pose questions to each other, going beyond their
own limited ideas and beliefs. Sometimes they discuss a single word
for thirty minutes, examining it in fine detail. They look at bhajans,
mythologies, characters in the traditional literature, philosophy, and
discuss everything fully.
Then Dinesh imagined that this could continue and spread indepen-
dent of Eklavya. He hoped that they would carry this spirit to other social
276 Bodies of Song
and religious settings, that they would no longer sit silent, not daring to
ask questions or express ideas.
In 2004, I discussed these records with Arvind Sardana, a longtime worker
in Eklavya’s Dewas office who was present throughout the period of the Kabir
manch and became director of the whole Eklavya organization in 2011. Arvind
suggested that it was a bit too optimistic to imagine that such changes would
continue and spread without structural support like that provided by the
Kabir manch: regular organized meetings; bus fare and tea; someone keeping
records in a register; collection and publication of bhajans; outreach to larger
worlds as in the Sadbhav Yatra; above all the remarkable mixing of people of
different social, educational, and economic backgrounds in an atmosphere of
mutual respect, equality, congeniality, and enjoyment. Such support was nec-
essary to create something new, sustained, and far-reaching. When Eklavya
discontinued the official Kabir manch in 1998, these structures dissolved. But
there is evidence that individuals experienced lasting changes, and that the
Kabir culture of the region was affected in a number of subtle ways. Some of
the individuals are profiled below in their own words. Examples of social and
cultural impacts also arise in the story of the chaukā āratī ritual and Prahladji’s
relationship to the Kabir Panth, told in chapter 7.24
The organizers succeeded in their goal of raising social issues through
the medium of Kabir, but they did not try to control the scope of the con-
versation. Singers sang whatever they wanted to, including plenty of songs
praising the guru or describing esoteric inner experiences. They delved
into the meanings of spiritual terminology, history, psychology, and social,
moral, and political questions, without any sense of limitation, often mak-
ing connections that might be missed by someone who is inclined to sepa-
rate the “political” and the “spiritual.”
Social meanings sometimes came out in contexts that were surprising
to me. On one occasion in 1992, Prahladji and his group sang the rollick-
ing “Sāhib (satguru) ne bhāng pilāī, akhiyoṇ meṇ lālan chhāī”—“the lord
(or alternately, the true guru) gave me a marijuana drink, my eyes turned
red.” Far from being a political song, it evokes the joyful “drunkenness”
of getting suddenly enlightened through the guru’s grace and seeing the
divine in every creature and every particle of nature. The signature lines at
the end have the names of both Ramanand and Kabir.
guru rāmānand tumarī balihārī, sir par ṭhokar aisī dīnī

sāheb kabīr bakshīsh kar do, yah agam bānī gāī
Ramanand was a famed Brahmin teacher, a devotee of Ram, who came

to Varanasi from the South and is widely believed to have been the guru of
Kabir as well as other bhakti poets of diverse castes. For someone familiar
with conventional history, an obvious way to translate the verse would be this:
Guru Ramanand, I surrender to you. You gave me such a bang on

the head!
Lord, give Kabir your blessing as he sings this ungraspable song.25
On the 1992 tape, I heard Prahladji briefly explicate the whole song.
When he got to this verse, he gave the conventional meaning, then offered
another interpretation. Ramanand followed the saguṇ devotional path,
worshiping the Ram avatar who had form and attributes—the son of King
Dasharatha in the Rāmāyaṇa story. He must have taught his disciples to
worship images. It could be that after meeting Kabir, he came to under-
stand the truth of nirguṇ devotion. “When Kabir-dās wrote, ‘In every bush
and tree, everything living, moving and unmoving, my lord is blooming,’ ”
Prahladji suggested, “he [Ramanand] must have realized this in his own
experience—the lord is everywhere, in everything. Then Ramanand must
have said, ‘Lord Kabir, give me your blessing.’ ”
If we take this interpretation, the “ungraspable song” (agam bāṇī) refers
to nirguṇ expression, and a very different translation emerges:
Guru Ramanand says, I surrender to you. You gave me such a bang

on the head!
Lord Kabir, give me your blessing as I sing this ungraspable song.
I first heard the story of Ramanand’s being Kabir’s disciple from one
of the leaders of the Dharamdasi Kabir Panth in Damakheda. There
was a text, he said, a goṣhṭhī or dialogue between Kabir and Ramanand,
which concluded with Ramanand having a great awakening to the truth
of nirguṇ bhakti and taking Kabir as his guru. My initial response to this
was urbane amusement. I knew the genre of these goṣhṭhīs. Every sect had
them: their founder encountered other great gurus and sectarian leaders,
debated with them, and vanquished everyone. The idea that Ramanand
had become Kabir’s disciple ran so wildly counter to received tradition that
I just smiled.
But when I heard Prahladji coming up with this interpretation in a
1992 tape from the Kabir manch, I got a bang on the head myself. At that
278 Bodies of Song
point I could not dismiss it as a generic “my guru is greater than your
guru” narrative. Prahladji was citing the lines of a Kabir bhajan that he and
many others in the room sang. His interpretation was clearly and reason-
ably based on the text. Was it a Dalit protest against the superiority of the
Brahmin guru?
The Brahminical shadow over Kabir had become a matter of intense
debate among the urban cognoscenti following the publication in 1997
of Dr. Dharamvir’s Kabīr ke ālochak (Kabir’s Literary Critics). Dharamvir
is a scholar who undertook to expose Brahminical prejudice in the way
Kabir was treated by the giants of mid-twentieth-century Hindi literary
criticism—Hazariprasad Dvivedi, Ramchandra Shukla, and Parashuram
Chaturvedi.
Dvivedi’s 1942 book Kabīr, a classic in Kabir studies, does not attempt
to demonstrate historically that Ramanand was Kabir’s contemporary and
guru. Taking that for granted, Dvivedi waxes eloquent on how the arrival
of such a guru must have transformed Kabir. As Dvivedi puts it, Kabir
was a rough jewel before that moment, a harsh critic of others’ delusions,
perhaps excessively influenced by the Nath tradition where cocky, inde-
pendent yogis valued their own efforts and achievements and belittled
others. But when Kabir found his guru in Ramanand, he realized the
depth of bhakti—devotion, love, self-surrender. He experienced previously
unknown ecstasy and was transformed into something far greater than he
could otherwise have been. This, according to Dvivedi, was Ramanand’s
grace.26
Dharamvir asserts that Dvivedi’s account has a subtext: For Dvivedi,
it is unthinkable that the unlettered Muslim/Shudra weaver Kabir could
achieve greatness on his own. This was possible only after he was perfected
by and subordinated to a Brahmin guru. Listening to the Eklavya tape,
I realized that five years before Dharamvir’s book provoked controversies
among urban intellectuals, Prahladji had argued that Ramanand had ulti-
mately surrendered to Kabir. The reversal of the commonly accepted iden-
tities of guru and disciple shows that objections to Ramanand’s authority
had a longstanding presence in grassroots Kabir culture. The arguments
of Prahladji and Dharamvir are different. The urban writer, based on his
reading of Dvivedi, asserts caste bias on the part of Dvivedi and other
twentieth-century Brahmin critics. The singer, based on his reading of
a Kabir-attributed song text, links the superiority of Kabir to Ramanand
with the superiority of nirguṇ to saguṇ bhakti. But there is a connection
between the two arguments. Nirguṇ traditions are deeply entwined with
the struggle against caste oppression—a relationship that David Lorenzen

explores fully in Praises to a Formless God, and that I have discussed in
chapter 1.
An interesting sidelight on Ramanand’s place in Kabir’s life came
unexpectedly in a conversation with Narayan Singh Delmia, who is pro-
filed at length later in this chapter. Near the end of our interview in 2002,
Narayanji asked me a few questions about my research, including this
exchange:
Narayan Singh Delmia (ND): Did you learn about Kabir? Who were his
mother and father? Did you learn that?
LH: About Kabir’s life? I read in books various stories that have been told
about Kabir. This isn’t really historical. From a historical point of view
we can’t prove much about what happened in Kabir’s life. Is this what
you’re asking me?
ND: Did you learn the names of his mother and father?
LH: I heard that Niru and Nima [Muslim weavers] were his parents. I also
found the story that a Brahmin widow had abandoned him and he was
adopted by Niru and Nima.
ND: You heard that he was a Brahmin widow’s son. And did you hear who
his father was?
LH: No, I didn’t hear that. Why are you asking? What have you heard?
ND: I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that he was Ramanand’s son.
LH: That’s an interesting story! I have never heard that. . . . I don’t believe
he was the son of a Brahmin widow. I have always assumed that he was
a Muslim, born in a Muslim family. Later when he was recognized as
someone very great, the Brahmins wanted to claim him. They didn’t
like the idea that he was a Muslim. But nowadays many people believe
that story about the Brahmin widow. What do you think about the story
that Ramanand was his father?
ND: I feel it is likely to be true. I will try to learn more about this. I will buy
some books and try to find out.
LH: I would be surprised if that story is written anywhere.
ND: I think it is written in Rajneesh’s book.
In this conversation, one of Kabir’s Dalit followers simultaneously affirms

Kabir’s intimate tie with the famous Brahmin guru and radically demotes
the guru by suggesting that he broke his vow of celibacy to father an even
greater guru, the Julaha saint of Varanasi.
280 Bodies of Song
While educated urban participants were interested in Hindu-Muslim

communal issues on the national level, the village singers were more
likely to apply Kabir’s critiques of religion and hypocrisy locally to the reli-
gious formation they knew best: the Kabir Panth. The Panth became a
focus of debate and criticism. The next chapter provides an introduction
to the Kabir Panth and its distinct lineages. Here just a few points will be
mentioned. The Panth’s relationship to Hinduism is not simple. While it
was created partly as an alternative to caste-ridden, Brahmin-dominated,
ritual-filled Hinduism, it also came to reproduce many Hindu forms. The
Panth tradition to which most Kabir devotees in Malwa belong, based in
Chhattisgarh and known as the Dharamdasi or forty-two-generation lin-
eage, is the most elaborately Hinduized of all the organized Kabir Panths.
In the Dharamdasi “branch,” the head guru’s lofty status verges on divin-
ity, and authority is vested in a wide network of mahants who function as
ritualists, initiators of disciples, local gurus, and preachers. A particular
ritual called chaukā āratī is considered indispensable to the Panth’s vari-
ous functions.
The open, egalitarian, and demystifying thrust of the manch contrasted
with the ritualizing and authoritarian tendencies of the Panth. Dinesh
told me that the chief Kabir Panth mahant of Dewas had once come
to the manch and remarked, “Why do you ask such people to interpret
Kabir? What do they know? This is something that only the Panth gurus
should do.” The day he came people were quiet, hardly daring to speak.
“Fortunately,” Dinesh said with a smile, “he never came back.”
Dinesh made a chart in the logbook, comparing the manch to Kabir
Panth activities. Table 6.1 below provides an abridged version.
A discussion on October 2, 1991, began with a comparison of Kabir
sākhīs that seemed to have contradictory messages. The singers came
up with their own theory of interpolation, considering who might have
inserted what false verses for their own self-interest, and what this implied
for their understanding of Kabir and themselves. Here is Dinesh’s account,
written in the logbook:
Narayanji sang a bhajan that included these lines:
Don’t sit with bad companions—

they never mention Ram.
A wedding procession without a groom—
what’s the point?
Table 6.1 Comparison of Kabir Manch and Kabir Panth Activities
Activity Manch Panth
Opening No invoking of authority. Dedication to guru.

General welcome, everyone Mahant gives sermon.
introduces self.
Arrangements Nothing special. Tents, lights, loudspeak-
ers, etc.
Status Everyone has equal status, Guru sits on a high seat.
respect, chance to talk. He talks, others listen.
Expense No charge, only bus fare. Must offer coconut, money.
Coming “empty-handed”
not acceptable.
Discussion Yes No
Relating To Open, respectful, friendly, Ordinary Kabir Panthi
Organizers approachable. doesn’t have the nerve to
question the guru.
Goals Focused on well-being in Always talking about mok-
this life, nothing about after- sha (salvation) and satlok
life or final salvation. (heavenly world beyond
this one).
Prahlad Singh Tipanya raised a question: Did Kabir hate bad peo-
ple? [As everyone knew, there were many songs and couplets that
warned against bad company.] If so, then what about this sākhī:
Kabir stands in the bazaar, wishing everyone well.

He’s not anyone’s friend, not anyone’s foe.
Narayanji replied with another sākhī:
From good company goodness,
from bad company grief.
Kabir says, wherever you go,
keep your own true company.27
Hiralal Sisodiya continued the discussion: If we search through the

bhajans and sākhīs, we can easily find two that have Kabir’s sig-
nature, and even though Kabir was one person, the lines say very
different things. The two seem to contradict each other. It may be
that in certain places, or in response to certain events, Kabir had
282 Bodies of Song
particular thoughts. It’s all right if there are differences in the ideas
he expressed. But if the ideas are totally opposite, then, according
to me, somebody has passed some fake coins in the market, calling
them Kabir’s coins. Here’s another example. In Kabir’s bhajans we
see [criticism of ] hypocrisy, pomp, ritual marks on the body, tem-
ples and mosques. But we also find some bhajans under Kabir’s
name that promote guru-worship, ritual, sacred books, homage
to Ganesh, and so on. Should we fall into these delusions? What
should we do?
Prahlad Tipanya said: There are always people in society looking
out for their own self-interest and power. They might have inserted
this kind of thing in the bhajans. The gurus themselves are hypo-
critical and pompous in the way they do the chaukā āratī [ritual],
making ordinary people throw away their money.
Girdhariji: Why do we do chaukā āratī?

Narayanji: We sit here and oppose chaukā āratī, but we ourselves
sponsor āratīs when the time comes.
Govardhanlalji: The gurus fill us with false promises and beliefs.
They say, if you don’t do this, then after you die, you won’t go to
heaven.
Narayanji: Why do we fall into their traps?
Mangilalji: We lack confidence and courage. We feel weak, so we
get caught in their snares.
Sisodiyaji: We need to become courageous. The first step is knowl-
edge. First look at yourself, then you can think about the infinite
universe. If we come to know ourselves, it’s a big thing.
A note in the register for July 2, 1992, the first anniversary of the manch,
describes a conversation with several participants in the predawn hours.
“After a year,” Dinesh asks, “do you see any change in yourselves?” He
summarizes their response:
We used to have religious fear [dhārmik ḍar]. If you don’t do this

you’ll suffer, you won’t get salvation. Now we’re not afraid. There’s
no point. Our self-esteem was weak. Now we feel more power and
self-confidence. We used to think of Kabir as a Hindu god, an ava-
tar. Now we think of him as a great human being. Narayanji com-
mented on a sākhī: “Gold, virtuous folk, and holy ones can break
and become whole again and again. / A false person’s like a clay
pot: one blow, it shatters.” Before we just said it, but now we under-
stand it and apply it in our lives.
That same night, Narayanji had sung Santo jīvat hī karo āshā. . . . man hī
se bandhan, man hī se mukti . . .—“Seekers, fulfill your hopes while you’re
alive. . . . It’s your own mind that binds you, your own mind that frees you.”
Explicating the song, he emphasized that there’s no point in dreaming
about happiness or wisdom after death. Our suffering and our freedom,
our problems and their solutions, are all right here.
Three Singer-Participants and Their Experience

of the Manch
Narayan Singh Delmia, Hiralal Sisodiya, and Prahlad Singh Tipanya were
often mentioned as having taken leadership roles in the manch. Prahladji
receives extensive attention throughout this book, especially in c hapters 1
and 7. Here I will profile Narayanji, Hiralalji, and a younger singer whom
I came to know in the 2000s, Kaluram Bamaniya.
Hiralalji
Hiralal Sisodiya, in his sixties when I met him in Ujjain in 2002, had
long been a politically conscious person. A staunch follower of B. R.
Ambedkar, he had converted to Buddhism along with millions of other
former “untouchables.” He was a member of the Bahujan Samaj Party
(BSP), which seeks to unite poor and disenfranchised sectors of Indian
society, particularly the lower castes, electing representatives who would
serve their interests. Hiralalji had studied up to the seventh grade and had
worked for many years in a cloth mill in Ujjain.
Dinesh Sharma, Hiralal’s brother Lalchand, and I drove from Dewas
to Ujjain to meet Hiralalji. He spoke with fluency, simplicity, clarity, and
color. His words here are presented largely as a continuous statement,
with brief bracketed indications of questions posed by Dinesh and me.
The main purpose of the Kabir manch was to help people understand
themselves, what they truly are inside . . . Kabir’s philosophy first of
all is against hypocrisy. People in our country, especially poor people,
284 Bodies of Song
Figure 6.3. Hiralal Sisodiya. Photo by Shabnam Virmani.
are deeply entangled in hypocrisy and superstition, and in the caste

system. The wall of casteism rises up between human beings. Often
there is no love, no sense of brotherhood, between people of different
castes. A kind of poison is created, which Kabir wanted to eliminate.
Kabir wanted equality. . . . The Kabir manch as I see it tried to shed
light on hypocrisy, superstition, orthodoxy, casteism. . . . In this coun-
try there are many delusions about God. Kabir said, brother, God is
within each person. It is called chetan svarūp (consciousness-form).
Some people call it ātmā, or buddhi, or chetnā. Kabir said:
Where are you searching for me, friend? I’m right here.
Not in Gokul or Mathura, not in Kashi or Kailash.28
So the temple, the mosque, all these religious places we’ve created—
it’s a kind of commercial business (dukandārī), a way of perverting
our intelligence, when in fact the supreme being (paramātmā) is
within every person. This is what Kabir taught. And this is what we
were doing with the Kabir manch, spreading Kabir’s ideas, awak-
ening people, freeing them from all kinds of problems, delusions,
superstitions.
[On being asked what they did at the monthly meetings.]

There were bhajans and interpretations. For the listeners who
didn’t have much knowledge, there were explanations. Those who
had some understanding in their own hearts about Kabir’s words,
ideas, and ideals—they clarified these things. This was helpful to
people. Some decided to lead their lives according to those ideals,
and even now they are living that way. In that atmosphere, along
with Kabir, the words of other sants also were discussed. Philosophy
was discussed. That’s what happened at the Kabir manch.
[About his own history with Kabir.]
I had been drawn to Kabir’s ideas since I was twelve or thirteen
years old. Gradually I changed. Gradually I got some joy, peace,
and happiness. Through my brother Lalchand I learned about the
Kabir manch. I started going and even took some responsibility
there. When I heard it was ending, I still went [on the 2nd of
the month], because I didn’t want to believe it was true. I kept
thinking about it. There were still many people from Ujjain who
I wanted to take to the manch. I had already brought several peo-
ple there, to learn about Kabir’s ideas, to get that happiness and
peace.
[About Kabir Panthi gurus who occasionally came to the meetings.]
They wore their beads, caps, brow marks, arm marks. But
their system, their way of thinking, was tied to ritualism. [The
next comment refers to the fact that the Kabir Panth strictly
prohibits alcohol, cigarettes, and nonvegetarian food.] It’s good
if people give up drinking, if they stop being drunkards. But so
what, if there’s not a revolution of ideas? This is the most impor-
tant revolution. When it takes place within a person, his whole
life is turned around. He is transformed. After a revolutionary
change, you can imagine a person becoming Kabir or Buddha
or Nanak or Ravidas or Dadu. Kabir’s philosophy puts the great-
est emphasis on a revolution of ideas. And it’s for everyone—not
for certain persons or castes. It’s universal. In India there are
many sects and schools of thought that have spread all kinds of
delusion. They won’t let some people enter the path. Even today,
they don’t let people in. Kabir wanted people to understand their
own nature (nij svarūp ka bodh). Recognize yourself! The supreme
being is not far away.
286 Bodies of Song
Hiralalji was very critical of the Kabir Panth, and he didn’t hesitate to chal-
lenge Panth authorities on their own turf. He relished telling us stories of
how he provoked the mahants.
One time I ran into Rajaramji Dangi from Jhonkar village—nowadays

he’s a teacher here in Ujjain, living in Bhanjushri colony. He was
with his guruji, Keshavdasji from Jhonkar. They came to the Eklavya
manch, and the guruji sang a bhajan with his mandalī. Before the
bhajan he sang a sākhī:
Step over the bounded—human. Step over the boundless—holy.

Step over both bounded and boundless—unfathomable thought.
I asked him to explain the sākhī. I said, you are a sant, so sāhabjī,
please explain it. Instead of explaining, he got angry with me. So
I told a story. Two men who lived in the desert went to Australia.
In the desert there’s a shortage of water. In Australia they found
a good hotel with running water. The water came out of the fau-
cets, and they were bathing. They were having a good time. But
their passport was only valid for one week. They were from the
desert, where there was always a shortage of water. After a week,
it was time to go back to India. Their guruji was ready to go, but
those two men were unscrewing the faucet from the pipe. He
said, “Hey, our plane is leaving soon, we need to go. Where are
those two guys?” He went looking for them in their room, and
they were unscrewing the faucet. They wanted to take the fau-
cet home. Why? Because water came out of it. They said, “We’ll
attach it there and water will come out. We’re very short of water
there.” Keshavdasji is like that.
Dangiji was angry with me. He said, “Is this the way you talk
to my guruji?” I said, “Brother, you are turning on the faucet, but
the water source is far away. You want to get water just by having a
faucet. In our society, we have sants and mahants like that: empty
faucets. There’s no water in them.” That’s what I said.
Another Kabir Panth guru, Mangaldas Sahib, used to come to
our meetings, and so did other sants and mahants. When we would
ask them very politely to explain the bhajans, they refused, saying we
should have only bhajans here, no explanations. We wanted under-
standing, but if any of the listeners raised a question, it seemed
those gurus had a problem. That’s why I had to tell that story.
[He speaks of the chaukā āratī rituals that are central to the
Dharamdasi tradition of the Kabir Panth. One form of the ritual is
chalāvā āratī, done on the occasion of someone’s death.]
There’s not even a religious discourse in a chalāvā āratī. I see it as
a new orthodoxy, a phony ritual propagated by the gurus. I have spo-
ken against it in a number of places. I have challenged Kabir Panthi
gurus and sants. There was one divānjī [ritual assistant], his name was
Kashinathji. He lived here in Ujjain, in Ashok Nagar. He has passed
on. In chalāvā chaukā āratī they say that they want to bring peace to the
soul of the deceased. So I said to him: “You say you’re bringing peace to
the soul of this dead man. Do you have any proof of this? Kabirji says,
Everyone went from here, with loads and loads piled on.
No one came from there. Run and try to ask.29
“The soul of the person to whom you’re bringing peace has gone
away. Did he send you a letter saying I’m peaceful or not peaceful,
hungry or thirsty, happy or unhappy? Have you got any proof?”
That guru also got angry with me! He said, you only want to criticize
Kabir’s teachings, nothing more. I said, I’m not criticizing, I’m talk-
ing about Kabir’s philosophy. Kabir’s philosophy is very pure, and
you’re ruining it, turning it into a commercial business. That’s not
acceptable to me. That’s why you have these chaukā āratīs and sat-
sangs so often in the villages. Chaukā āratī, ānandi āratī, with Kabir
Panthi mahants sitting in the center, wearing their special shirts.
Once I went to Pavasa village. Shyamdasji from Tonk Kala had
gone there for a program. He was wearing his pointed cap and
marks on his forehead. In full costume, he was sitting under the
canopy. I asked him: Are you Dharamdasji? Are you Kabirji? The
person who had organized that chaukā, who belonged to the Malviya
[Balai] community, said to me, “Sisodiyaji, don’t say anything, he’ll
get upset.” I said, “I’ll definitely say something. When you put on an
outfit like that, should I call you Dharamdasji, or should I call you
Kabirji? What should I call you? Tell me!”
I am opposed to all this. Kabir never wanted this kind of ritual-
ism. Not a bit! Kabir’s wisdom was pure nectar. Anyone who drinks
of that wisdom, who grasps it and knows that truth, will experience
stillness and joy upon joy. In the villages they often do this ritual
without even mentioning Kabir’s teaching. It’s terrible.
288 Bodies of Song
As our conversation drew to a close, Hiralalji pulled together the vari-

ous threads of what he had told us.
Eklavya’s Kabir manch was a medium for all human communities, a

medium for the birth of a revolution in ideas. The goal was to give all
people some peace in their hearts and minds and to encourage the
broadening of their imaginations. To eradicate confusion and dark-
ness and to create light. That’s why I was so very happy to discover the
Kabīr bhajan aur vichār manch, and that’s why I went there so regu-
larly. Whenever I got an announcement, I went there. Whatever I
have received from the satguru—four annas, eight annas, whatever I
have been able to understand, I want to share it. If someone becomes
a Kabir Panthi and puts a rosary or a bead on a string around his neck,
does this mean that he has learned how to think? That a revolution of
ideas has taken place in him and his superstition and orthodoxy have
been erased? These are difficult matters. Kabirji says:
You’re a sant? So what? Don’t play till you’re ripe.

Crush half-grown mustard seeds—no oil, no pulp.30
So what if someone puts on the dress of a sant or a Kabir Panth mah-

ant? The mustard seeds have to be ripe before you can extract oil
from them. Oil doesn’t come out of unripe seeds. Sants and mahants
should be ripe, mature. Only if they are ripe can they make others
ripe. Most of those sants and mahants wandering around, whether
they belong to the Kabir Panth or some other Panth, they’re putting
on a pious show, they’re out to get money. Whether the lives of oth-
ers improve or don’t improve—they don’t care.
Finally he turned to Dinesh.
Now I want to make this request to you: please start the Kabir manch
again. Let the mandalīs come, let them sing bhajans. I have a little time
left in my life. Whatever little morsels I have, I want to share, so that
others can also have a revolution in ideas. I want to share, so that the
human community can move on the path of truth. You deserve our
gratitude for creating the Kabir manch. Please start it again!
Narayanji
Narayan Singh Delmia, a well-known Kabir singer of the area, was employed
by Eklavya to help with communications and arrangements—strenuous
tasks in that pre–cell phone era when many villages didn’t even have
land line connections. Getting to know Narayanji over the last few years,
I have seen that he is a wonderful organizer, a person of keen intelligence
and clear ideas who has a way of bringing people together, including and
encouraging everyone. When others are singing, if the mood is right, he
is likely to get up and dance, gracefully whirling and moving his arms,
the pleasure of the moment apparent on his face. His social and religious
ideas are quite radical; without compromising them, he seems to know
how to express them with humor and sensitivity, in ways that won’t polar-
ize a group. When the manch decided to create youth mandalīs, Narayanji
was the one who organized and trained them. A few years later, when
the Bangalore Kabir Project and Eklavya supported programs to develop
women’s mandalīs and to bring Kabir creatively into schools, Narayanji
was the leader they called on. Though his formal education went only up
to the third grade, his quest for knowledge has been lifelong.31 Narayanji
has deeply internalized Kabir’s poetry. When I met him in 2002, he was
fifty-eight, a slender man with white hair and a quick smile. He lived in a
small house in Barendwa village, Ujjain district.
On August 1, 2002, I went to Barendwa for a singing session with some
of Narayanji’s friends and neighbors. He had arranged a room, its walls
Figure 6.4. Narayanji breaks into dance at a village performance. Photo by Hari
Adivarekar.
290 Bodies of Song
made of smooth whitewashed clay. It had just one tiny window. Outside
everything was dripping with rain, the sky densely overcast. And the elec-
tricity was down. We couldn’t sit outside under a tree, as we would have
done in clear weather. Inside it was very dark. Someone lit a “chimney,”
a small kerosene-fueled lamp that looked like a candle. Then a rope was
swung over a ceiling-beam to hang a lantern. They lit the lantern, and the
space suddenly became warm, intimate, and lively, with big shadows play-
ing against the white walls. Narayanji led off.
“Sometimes, Lindaji, I don’t know what to think about Kabir—whether

he was a human being or God.”
“Which way are you leaning right now?”
“I think he was human.”
He spoke now, as he often did, with a smile that conveyed a combination

of amusement and irony.
Then we went around the circle, about sixteen men, young, old, and
in-between, and each introduced himself. One tall man with a black beard
said he was Raju Das, a mahant of the Kabir Panth. “For me, Kabir is
God.” Most of the others didn’t express an opinion. But when the singing
started, they were all ready. One man played a dholak for everyone. The
tambūrā was passed around. The mahant turned out to be an enthusias-
tic and tuneful singer, and a virtuoso on the harmonium. His right arm
stretched out to emphasize an emotional point while his left hand kept
playing on the keys. This gathering had been called for me, but they all
knew each other and blended easily. Singing, they were relaxed and in
their element. Narayanji had a way of bringing forth many voices, giving
everybody a chance.
Later that month we sat in a garden behind the Jain temple in Maksi,
the nearby market town. Dinesh was with us. I asked Narayanji to tell me
how he got started singing Kabir.
I liked singing and playing music from the time I was ten or twelve.
I was a good dancer too. I danced a lot—in my village, in Maksi,
and other places. I also acted in some very good plays, up to the
time when I was about fifteen. After that I played instruments and
worked in bands. Once I went to a Kabir program in Bhind [near
Gwalior]. I was a little scared because some big senior people were
there. So I hid myself and sat far off. I didn’t even know if they’d
let me come in. But they asked me to sing and play, and the senior
people liked it a lot. From about the time I was thirty, I was singing
with my mandalī. We used to go to Kabir Panth chaukās and other
functions. I tried to do every bhajan with care and concentration.
I was quite in demand.
I really liked singing, right from the beginning. I sang kīrtan
and bhajans and played instruments. This went on for years. People
started telling me I needed to get a guru, because without a guru
I wouldn’t get [spiritual] knowledge. So I looked for a guru. I went
to Shipra and got initiated by a guru there. I didn’t pay attention
to what panth he belonged to, but he took a lot of gānjā and bhāng
[hashish and marijuana], so he couldn’t have been in the Kabir
Panth. He was a good guru. Later I went to Radhasoami and made
Maharaj Charan Singh my guru.
Tipanyaji and I used to sing together in those days. We sang at
All India Radio, and in various functions. We just picked up the
tambūrā and went off to sing.
One day on a bus, when he was carrying his tambūrā, Narayanji got
into a conversation with Syag-bhāī and Dinesh. That’s how his association
with Eklavya and the Kabir manch began. He helped with the initial orga-
nization and attended regularly for all eight years.
At first the other people didn’t join the discussions. But I sang bha-
jans and talked about them. After a while, they started talking too.
Syag-bhāī asked everyone—why are you singing bhajans? They said
because we enjoy it, and because we want to get mukti [liberation].
Syag-bhāī said you only get mukti when you give something up. So
you’re not going to get mukti from this.
Other questions came up. Why do you worship idols? Why do
you touch people’s feet? Gradually we began to understand more,
our knowledge increased. We went to different villages, created new
mandalīs, had discussions with them. When we saw some confusion,
we would talk about it. For example, we would say, “You do ceremo-
nies for snakes, you worship Bhairū Mahārāj or other gods and god-
desses. Nothing will come of this.” They sang Kabir bhajans but still
worshiped idols, believed in gods and goddesses. I would say, brother,
many of Kabir’s bhajans talk about this. [Narayanji sang some verses
292 Bodies of Song
from a harshly critical bhajan, which is translated in full at the end of

chapter 8.]
Serve the true guru, you idiot.

Why have you forgotten your country?
The confused gardener tears off leaves. Every leaf is alive!

He offers torn leaves to a god’s image that has no life.
You make the goddess’s form of mud and worship her,

then grab her leg and toss her in the water. What happened to her
power?32
You call priests from all over. They march around your house,
break a coconut, offer the shell to god, and eat the meat themselves.
In this way we sang bhajans and moved to higher levels of

understanding.
When asked if they had discussed these things before the Kabir manch
started, he said they had, but not in such depth.
“You always liked singing,” I said, “but there are many poets and many
types of bhajans. Why did you especially choose Kabir?”
He said he liked other bhajans too, but there was one type that he was
especially drawn to, and that Kabir excelled in:
When Kabir saw Hindus and Muslims clashing, he tried to bring

them together. This kind of sākhī—
Hindu? I don’t think so. Muslim? Afraid not.

The hidden essence is in both faiths. I play in both.
A doll of five elements, a trick makes it hang together.

I ask you, pandit, which is bigger? Word or creature?
The hidden came from the unseen—defects stuck to it here.

Reverse, merge with the unseen—defects disappear.
Seeing Hindus and Muslims in that situation, Kabir created this

type of bhajan. I loved it. And the ones about gods, goddesses,
image-worship—I sang many of those. I also liked singing bhajans
about caste and untouchability.
Narayanji spoke of how his experiences in the manch had changed him.
I used to believe in gods and goddesses and worship them. When

my wife gave birth to sons and daughters, I used to take them to the
Brahmin to be named. But when my daughter and son had their
children, I didn’t take them to any Brahmin. I named them myself,
or my wife named them. I was less deluded than before. Now I don’t
worship gods or goddesses.
There was a young woman in the village, a relative of ours, who
didn’t have children. People said, go see this god or that goddess,
take her to Gujarat. Then she will get children. A lot of people have
gone to Gujarat. Maybe children were born afterwards and maybe
they weren’t, but I don’t believe in any of that. I took them both, the
husband and wife, to be tested by a doctor in Indore. We found out
that he didn’t have what you need to make a baby. Seed. If he doesn’t
have that, where are children going to come from? I didn’t go for
help to any god or goddess. I gave up all superstitions. I began to
think in a scientific way.
And you can be sure of this: I absolutely don’t accept any caste
distinctions. I take food and water from anyone’s house, and I’ll
bring food and feed it to anyone, in any house. I wasn’t like that
before. I myself practiced untouchability.33 I hated people who
I thought were below me. But after getting involved in the Kabir
bhajan manch, it was as if my body had been totally turned around
[palaṭ gayī]. That’s how it was. Turned around. Yes, yes, my ideas
completely changed. What was I doing? Where was I going? I real-
ized how wrong I had been. . . . After that I started reading books.
I read Kabir. I read about Islam. I also read Rajneesh. I began to
realize something frightening. I was completely on the wrong track.
Now I understood clearly, without a doubt, how I needed to change.
Picking up on Narayanji’s mention of mukti, which usually means lib-

eration of the spiritual self from saṃsārā, the worlds of birth and death,
I asked if there was really such a thing as mukti, and if so, what was it? He
explained it in an unconventional way:
If you let go of something, then you are free [mukt]. For instance,
I smoked bīḍīs. Now I’m free from bīḍīs. I have no desire. I’m
free. I ate meat. Now I have no desire for it. I’m free. I drank
liquor. Now I’m liberated. Whatever my religious life used to
be—I believed in Bhairū Maharaj or Bajarangbalī or some other
294 Bodies of Song
god—I am liberated from that too. I don’t want these gods. The
only gods I want are human beings. Living, conscious, you and
me, here, having a conversation. Those are the gods I want. They
are the ones who can turn me around. If I’m on the wrong path,
you can tell me, or you can take my hand and walk with me. If
I go to those pictures and statues of gods, nothing will change in
me. That’s what I think.
I asked Narayanji to say more specifically what happened at the manch

that changed him so much.
One thing that I liked very much was that there wasn’t any trace of
caste consciousness. [Looking at Dinesh, he continues.] Another
thing I liked was that, from the very start, you helped me. Months
after turning the work over to me, you still helped. When we were
together, you washed the cups and plates and mugs. No mat-
ter what castes came to the Kabir manch, and all kinds of castes
came, even though you were a Brahmin, you washed the mugs. So
I thought about it. If a Brahmin can do this work, why shouldn’t I?
In Anu and Arvind’s house, they would always serve me food.34
They showed me so much love. Even today they love me. Anu and
Arvind are 100% pure gold. Sometimes Anu was sitting and talk-
ing with me, so Arvind would make the tea. Yes, and sometimes he
would make a meal and serve it. He has such a good nature. I liked
it so much that in my heart I thought, why shouldn’t I help my
wife like this, in my own house? And I have helped her, quite a few
times. Many times. Syag-bhāī also did this kind of work. I went to
his house, and there was never any consciousness of caste. I asked
him, “Syag-bhāī, there are no pictures [of gods] in your house. So
who do you believe in?” He said, “Narayanji, I believe in you. What
do I have to do with pictures?” Being exposed to these kinds of ideas
was refreshing. My mind became more and more open.
Then I went to a lot of different places in organizing the manch.
I formed new mandalīs. I went to the houses of chamārs [a caste that
traditionally deals with leather and dead bodies of animals]. Where
I wouldn’t have eaten before, I ate. Where I wouldn’t have slept
before, I slept. And in my heart I didn’t feel—how could I come
into this house? I felt—these people are very poor. Where did they
get such a good quilt to cover me with? Sometimes I slept on the
ground. Once I went to the house of someone in a very low caste.

I slept with only a cotton dhotī to cover me, on a thin straw mat.
I didn’t think, how can I associate with him? I thought, this brother
is very poor. Seeing such people and such circumstances, my way of
thinking changed. The old feelings weren’t there any more.
In late December 2002, Narayanji organized another bhajan-singing

gathering for me in his village. A lot of men, women, and children got
together in the verandah in front of his house, spreading out into the open
space beyond. I was introduced to a man who, the locals assured me, was
110 years old. As the night went on, I was freezing even while wrapped in
a blanket, but the 110-year-old man seemed to be comfortable in minimal
cotton clothing, his bare legs stretched out.
The old Kabir singing tradition, Narayanji said, was with the
ektār—literally “one string,” a simple instrument with one or two strings.
He showed me an old broken-down ektār he had. The practice of using the
five-stringed tambūrā came later, and the use of other instruments, like
harmonium and violin, was much more recent. Now no one uses ektār
except a few who wander around begging.
The singing started to roll. I noted that while Narayanji didn’t have the
powerfully penetrating voice or the electrifying presence of Prahladji, he
had the gift of building group spirit. He did a call and response with other
singers, steadily raising the energy level. Around him were many people
smiling, singing, playing instruments, moving their bodies.
Over the next few years, I found myself in a variety of settings with
Narayanji. When called upon to sing, he often chose a song that aimed
barbs at delusions that he noticed in the vicinity. Once we were in Dinesh’s
village house. Dinesh’s father, a Brahmin priest, was hosting a bhajan
session that included but wasn’t limited to songs of Kabir. There was a
big shrine in the house, replete with Hindu gods, and clearly the site of
regular worship. When he got a turn to sing, Narayanij sang the bhajan
that begins with the deluded gardener who breaks off leaves and flowers
to offer to a lifeless statue. Later I asked him, “Why did you choose that
bhajan on that occasion?” He replied, “They had a big temple, didn’t they?
Wouldn’t they be offering all these things to the statues of their gods?”
On another occasion we went to a place that was called a Kabir ashram
but was full of images of Hindu gods, along with images of Kabir depicted
as a god. They did an elaborate Hindu āratī ceremony followed by bhajans.
Narayanji sang a satirical bhajan that criticized ritual and spoke irrever-
ently of the Bhagavad Gita. The guru of the ashram got angry.
296 Bodies of Song
Narayanji also likes to sing rousing songs that touch on current politics.
One of his favorites is Āzādī, the Urdu word for “freedom.” In this simple
call and response, he sings out a line, and others participate by shouting
the last word, āzādī. The chorus is, “Freedom, freedom, everyone wants
freedom!” Each stanza mentions a different category of people who want
freedom.
This of course is not a song of Kabir. Neither is the Mandir-masjid song
that responds to the conflicts in Ayodhya and associated communal ten-
sion and violence.
Temple, mosque, church—you’ve divided up God.

You’ve divided earth, divided the sea. Don’t divide humanity.
Hindu says, “My temple! Temple’s my true space.”

Muslim says, “My Mecca! Mecca alone is true.”
They fight, fight and die, fight and get destroyed.

Who knows what cruel, cruel things they do?
Who does this? Look! Who walks here? Learn!

For the sake of power, politicians claim to serve the nation.

They join upholders of religion, while we face desperation.
Your brother’s cut to pieces, but the politician’s honored.

Once he gets the votes and wins, it’s time for exploitation.
Temple, mosque, church—you’ve divided up God.

When asked why he was singing non-Kabir songs in Kabir bhajan pro-
grams, he said that he had reflected on what Kabir might have done if he
were living now, and that reflection inspired him to sing these songs.
LH: Why do you think the Eklavya people started the manch?
ND: They were thinking, OK, these people sing bhajans, but do they under-
stand what they’re singing? Do they have knowledge about it? Do they
realize its importance? They thought of providing some education that
would bring about change. They never said, don’t do this or that. Slowly,
gently, lovingly they provided a space. If they had talked in another way,
the whole thing would have broken up. They worked at a very slow
pace, so that it wouldn’t break, but people would come together, and
their understanding would increase. I would set up dates to go various
places—here the 8th, there the 10th. Whatever I was learning, I would
go and tell it to the mandalīs.
LH: They came regularly? They liked it?
ND: Yes, if they didn’t like it, why would they come?
LH: Why did they like it so much?
ND: They saw that there was absolutely no discrimination [bhedbhāv] here.
There was no untouchability here. Their superstitions were diminish-
ing from the bhajans and the discussions.
LH: They enjoyed meeting with the other mandalīs?
ND: They enjoyed it a lot. And even now, though the Kabīr bhajan aur
vichār manch is over, they still have a lot of affection for each other.
Those few people who were there from the beginning, they still feel a
great fondness for each other. When it ended, people felt very sad. Why
did it end? What happened?
LH: Do you remember any particular debates or discussions that left a
strong impression on you?
ND: People used to talk about Dinesh—he’s a Brahmin, he can’t really be
interested in these things. What does he have to do with Kabir? Why
is a Brahmin sitting with us? He’s just doing it for money, because it’s
his job. He’s not really sincere. But I didn’t agree. I had seen Sharmaji’s
nature. He put in so much time, drank tea with us, came to our houses
and ate food with us. Once he came to my house with Arvind-bhāī. I
didn’t have any good bedding. And it was raining. You know in rainy
season, the quilts get a bad smell. But Sharmaji said, I’ll use that quilt.
I didn’t have a fan. It was a place where you might think sleep is impos-
sible. I realized that these two, Arvind-bhāī and Sharmaji, they can go
anywhere, sit anywhere, sleep anywhere.
LH: Were there were any problems in the way the manch was done, any-
thing you’d change if it were to be done again?
ND: I didn’t see any problem. There was food, there was tea and water,
everyone enjoyed it. If anyone didn’t enjoy it, they just didn’t come.
There was a little trouble about money at first, they were giving every-
one bus fare, but it was too much to give bus fare to everyone who
came. So we decided to give bus fare to two featured mandalīs each
time. There was some uproar about Kabir Panth mahants who expected
to be placed on a high seat and treated with reverence. They were told
that everybody would be treated equally. We wouldn’t set up a high seat
298 Bodies of Song
for them. They didn’t like it. They said no one should go to such a place,
where we are insulted, where we aren’t respected. Some people would
only come for Tipanyaji. They’d come and ask: is he here or not? If not,
they left.
LH: Why?
ND: He had a wonderful style of singing. In Malwa there’s nobody like that.
His cassettes are very good, he has done a great job of spreading Kabir.
This is the gift of Eklavya. They introduced him to Suresh Patel, who
invited him and recommended him. Then he had cassettes, he was
invited to Lucknow, to Doordarshan. This is Eklavya’s gift.
Dinesh: But he also had a great talent. That’s why it happened with him
and not other mandalīs.
Kaluramji
Kaluram Bamaniya, a well-known Kabir singer in Malwa when I started
my work in 2002, was a generation younger than the three singers we
have met so far. Recognizing his rich, powerful voice and beautiful reper-
toire, Shabnam Virmani included him along with Prahladji when she pro-
duced the double CD set Kabir in Malwa (Virmani 2008e). In the 1990s,
Figure 6.5. Kaluram Bamaniya singing. Photo by Smriti Chanchani.

during the Eklavya manch, he was a beginner. I knew him and enjoyed his
music throughout my decade in Malwa.
The following profile is based mainly on a conversation he and I had
in August 2011. In addition, excerpts from Shabnam’s filmed interviews
(2004–05) are italicized and set off by asterisks. It is interesting to note
that Kaluram’s name, like those of Prahladji and Narayanji, reflects the
common practice among Dalits of adopting names associated with upper
castes. “Prahlad Singh Tipanya” and “Narayan Singh Delmia” include
Singh, the marker of a Rajput or kśhatriyā identity. In talking about his
life, Prahladji mentions how upper castes in his village objected to Dalits’
using the name “Singh” (chapter 1). “Bamaniya” means “Brahmin”—
making for a startling juxtaposition with “Kaluram,” which combines the
popular name Ram with kālū, meaning "black." Such a name would only
be found in a Dalit family.
Kaluram Bamaniya (KB): I was born in Tonk Khurd village in 1970.

I went to school till 3rd standard, but our situation was precarious,
so I had to quit school and start working for others. I would take
the cattle out to graze. Later I did farm work and labor. My grand-
father, father, and father’s brother used to sing bhajans. I sat with
them, played manjīrā, and started singing. By the time I was about
ten, I could sing bhajans and play the tambūrā. While working as a
laborer or plowing fields, I kept singing, enjoying it more and more.
Then I went to Rajasthan.
LH: Rajasthan?
KB: I ran away without telling anyone. I was a restless kid. I never paid
attention to my studies. Instead of going to school I’d go for a swim in
the lake.
LH: How old were you?
KB: I think fourteen or fifteen. In Savai Madhupur Bajaria I met Ram Nivas
Rao, a wonderful singer. He had such a sweet voice. He was well known
there the way Tipanyaji is here. I was working at a restaurant near the
bus station. One day Ram Nivas Rao was going off with his tambūrā to
sing bhajans. I spoke to him, and he told me I should come to the func-
tion at a nearby college. That day I sang two bhajans for him. He liked
my singing. I stayed in that place twelve or fourteen months. I used
to go to his performances and sing bhajans with him. I learned about
classical tāl (rhythm) and how to play a few instruments. If I’d stayed
longer I would have learned a lot more. I was still singing in Malwa
300 Bodies of Song
style. When I went back to my village, I kept singing. I was the only
one in my family who was performing. They kept trying to stop me,
but I continued. Eventually I got a B rating on All Indian Radio, then
a B High.
***
[Shabnam talks with Kaluram, Dinesh Sharma, and Dayaram Sarolia as
they drive along in a car.]
KB: I’m not very educated—only 3rd standard pass. But I cleared 8th through
the informal system. I got through the 5th because Indira Gandhi died. They
promoted everybody without exams.
SV: Why?
Dinesh: Things were irregular, too many holidays. Schools were closed because
of riots.
KB: I cleared 6th the same way. . . . (Shabnam looks puzzled.) Rajiv Gandhi
died. (General laughter.)
***
LH: Did your family belong to any Panth?

KB: No, they worshiped Hindu gods and goddesses like Bhairu and Durga,
and they ate meat and drank liquor. They would sing bhajans while
drinking country liquor. I also took meat and alcohol, but when I joined
the Kabir Panth I gave them up. That was fifteen years ago.
LH: How did it happen that you took initiation from [Kabir Panth mahant]
Mangaldasji?
KB: I had gone to Pitampur near Indore with my wife and children to work
in a factory. Back home my brothers got initiated in the Kabir Panth.
They were asked to sing bhajans, but they weren’t good at singing, so
they called me. One day they came over to my place, and I got some
liquor and meat. But they refused to eat and told me that they had
taken dikśhā from the guru. They persuaded me to take it too. I was
impressed that they could give up meat and alcohol and thought there
must be something really powerful about this dikśhā. Then I went back
home, found a mandalī, and started singing. Guruji praised me.
***
SV: When the Eklavya forum started, were you part of it from the beginning?
KB: We joined very early on. I had the position of divān, assistant, to the most
important mahant in Dewas. I was with him for at least ten years. I would
prepare the space for the rituals, make the kanthīs [wooden bead on a string,
given at initiation, worn around the neck] and distribute them. I did all
kinds of work. I walked around carrying a stick, with my sleeves rolled up
like a goon. If anyone said anything against the guru, I would hit them. So
no one said anything (laughs.) But the ideas we got from the Eklavya forum
gave us a new kind of strength. We realized that Kabirji was saying that
these things are false. Then I lost interest in all that.
SV: So you’re not a divān anymore?
K: Only in name. I don’t do the work anymore. . . .
SV: When the Eklavya manch started, were you and Tipanyaji and Narayanji
all together?
KB: No, we were opposed to each other. Sometimes we were close to fighting.
Dinesh: Kaluram was very traditional, and Tipanyaji was very progres-
sive at that time. We asked Tipanyaji to be a leader of the Kabir manch.
People respected him a lot. He was a teacher, like a guru, and received a
lot of respect. We felt he was a capable person to facilitate the meetings. . . .
Narayanji and Tipanyaji were both leaders. Kaluram belonged to the more
traditional faction. They opposed our discussions. But still, Kaluramji used
to come regularly to Eklavya and stay through the night.
KB: I wasn’t opposed to the discussions. I just thought, “They are deluded, and
I will set them straight.” They thought I was deluded. It was a kind of com-
petition. But they won, I lost! (laughing)
***
KB: At the ashram I was Guruji’s assistant, and I wouldn’t let anyone
speak against him. But after going to Eklavya for a while, I started feel-
ing distaste for the superstitious and showy ways of the Kabir Panth.
Initially I didn’t like Eklavya because they sang less and talked more.
But gradually I realized how important it was to know the meaning of
those words and the power behind them. . . . I started disliking going to
the ashram. I developed an allergy [uses English word] toward Guruji.
I actually started having arguments with him. Guruji told me that he
had no connection [lenā-denā] with the outer world. I said to him, “You
are living in this world, so how could you not be connected to it? Why
not just leave this world and go live somewhere up in the sky?” . . . Now
I haven’t seen him for six or seven years. I never go there.
LH: Was your guru angry with you?
302 Bodies of Song
KB: Very angry. So angry that he wanted to bring me down. He tried to

keep me poor, to prevent me from singing. He wanted me to come
back and beg forgiveness. But I stuck to my position. . . . The Kabir
Panth mostly consists of lower classes of people. But they offer up coco-
nuts, flowers, money. They are exploited. Eklavya didn’t say you should
do this or that or follow any particular belief. The Eklavya people would
ask questions. Is it a good thing that you go out to meet your guruji
while your children are at home doing nothing? And they encouraged
discussion about the bhajans.
LH: Now after all these stages of your life, you have a lot of opportunities to
perform as a singer. What is your experience?
KB: Because of Kabir’s vāṇī [words], because of singing, I get opportuni-
ties to meet many people and exchange ideas. All this has happened
because of the vāṇī. Sant vāṇī is very powerful. I am fortunate that my
father and grandfather taught me these bhajans. Because of media,
cassettes and modern technology, sant vāṇī has spread very far. I am
grateful to you and Shabnam for helping me to get access to stages in
such good places. But there are many other good singers. Tipanyaji
and Kaluram aren’t the only ones. Bhairu Singh Chauhan, Dayaram
Sarolia, and others are also very good singers who deserve to be on the
stage and aren’t getting such good opportunities. It’s unfortunate that
they haven’t been able to share the stage with us.34
Eklavya Organizers and How They Were Changed

Syag-bhāī
One day in 2003, Shabnam and I unexpectedly ran into Syag-bhāī in
Bhopal. As we were all heading back to Dewas, a four-hour journey away,
we shared a hired car. Shabnam had her camera and shot a long conversa-
tion on the road (more of it will be offered in chapter 8). Here we include
the portion where Syag-bhāī speaks of how the manch affected him. The
main change he describes was in an enhanced appreciation of the capaci-
ties of ordinary people, independent of institutional connections, school-
ing, and economic status. While he still wanted everyone to have access
to established structures of power, including formal education, his ori-
entation had changed. The starting point now was what ordinary people
had, rather than what they lacked. This vision played a role in his leaving
Eklavya a few years later, to join with others in forming another NGO,
Samavesh, that worked more directly with people wherever they were and
not just through formal education.
SV: You have talked a lot about dialogue. It was two-way. Did you feel there
were changes in the Eklavya people?
RNS: The Eklavya people also learned through dialogue and experiments.
LH: Did you personally learn anything from the people in the mandalīs?
RNS: I learned a lot. I learned how much strength is in common people,
much more than I had realized. My faith in common people increased
a lot. I became less attached to formal education and realized how
much could be done with people [who had little or no schooling]. My
conviction about this became firm. Now the work I’m doing is all
community-based. Previously I worked to improve school education,
train teachers, create curricula and materials. Gradually I changed
emphasis. We started to work with literacy, with the panchāyatī
rāj policy in M.P. through which women become officers in the
panchyat—women who were illiterate, who belonged to scheduled
castes. . . . Some of us decided to create Samavesh, whose entire focus
is this [community-based] work. . . . The Kabir bhajan mandalīs—they
had a spiritual, or you might say nonmaterial inspiration. We wanted
community groups that were focused on people’s basic life needs—for
women, small farmers, etc. Autonomous groups that wouldn’t be
dependent on government or NGOs. . . .
We saw a struggle between two types of systems. One, as I said
before, was our traditional system, in which people believe in different
castes, different status for men and women, different treatment of girls
and boys, everywhere difference. On the other hand we have modern
democracy where you are a citizen. As a citizen you are equal. If you go
to vote, they aren’t going to say you’re a woman so you can’t vote. Equal
citizenship. How can we convey these things to people: these are your
rights, you can work in the schools, you can work in the panchāyat.
As Kabir said—there is a power inside of you, and you should con-
nect with that power. Some are searching for that power outside (he
gestures outwardly), some inside (he gestures toward his chest). We
are saying there are social powers through which the schools run, the
panchāyats run. Recognize those powers. What are they? In our elec-
tions, some people aren’t allowed to advance, although they can really
do this work. The power to become sarpanch, to direct others, to sign
304 Bodies of Song
orders. Who would really be the best sarpanch? We are encouraging

this kind of debate. What is our agency? Where is our money going?
Why are we poor? Are we poor because of our past lives, or because of
the systems that are operating in this life?
As Kabir in his time tried to understand a whole spiritual world, we
are preparing people to understand the social and economic realities
of today’s world. . . . Can people read the constitution and understand
it? Can they understand the law? Can women understand what their
rights are? From the Kabir manch I got a stronger conviction that this is
possible. If people can devote this much time and energy to a spiritual
world, they can also devote time to changing this world. And these very
people are the ones who will change our world!
Dinesh Sharma
While Syag-bhāī oversaw the whole project and was the principal guiding
hand from Eklavya’s side, Dinesh did most of the groundwork, attending
to countless details, traveling, organizing, keeping records. He underwent
a personal change on a very different level. As the son of a Brahmin priest
living in a large village with his parents, wife, daughter, and son, he con-
fronted his own deeply embedded caste identity and changed his life in
concrete ways, encountering resistance in himself and in his family along
the way. The following is from a filmed interview conducted by Shabnam
(Virmani 2008b). Dinesh is driving a car, she is in the front seat with him,
and in the back seat are Kaluram Bamaniya and Dayaram Sarolia, two Dalit
Kabir singers who have a relaxed and friendly relationship with Dinesh.
My family has been connected to the Singaji Panth for

generations—my father, his father, his father, I don’t know how far
back it goes.35 So I’ve been hearing this since childhood, it’s in my
blood. Our house was a Singaji ashram. My father was the head of
a mandalī that sang bhajans of the sants. They always sang Kabir,
along with many other sants. The Singaji Panth is all upper caste.
My father is a respected yagyachārī, a conductor of rituals. For the
busy season, two or three months a year, he’s hardly in the house.
Rituals were always going on at home, and the bhajan mandalī met
three times a month . . . singing for four or five hours. . . .
Before joining Eklavya I completely believed in caste distinc-

tions. Even after joining Eklavya, I had those ideas. I was brought
up in that kind of family. When we started the manch, I was going
to people’s houses . . . talking about these things. It was very chal-
lenging for me. The first time I had to eat [in a lower-caste home] . . .
really, Dayaram (he turns toward the back seat), I was in a state. I’m
telling you the truth. Daya, when I had to eat a meal, I mean I had
to stay there and night came, there was no way out. In my mind this
question was going round and round—to eat or not to eat. It was
a big thing. Half of my mind was saying, hey man, get out of here,
eat somewhere outside. Then after eating, I felt—what have I done?
What have I eaten? This conversation kept going on inside of me.
But I came to realize I was not wrong to do this. If I want to do
this work with all my heart, then I must first break these patterns
in myself. Gradually all these worries decreased. A little example,
a very small thing but still . . . . In our family we always put the
vegetable on one plate and the roṭī [bread] on a separate plate. But
you (turning to the guys in back) put the vegetable and roṭī all on
the same plate. When this happened it seemed very weird to me.
Very very strange. I took my pen and moved the roṭī away from the
vegetable on the plate. That’s what I had learned. Then the water
was in the big pot, and there was a dipper on the pot, and they
served everyone from that dipper. I felt anxious. They were putting
the dipper on the floor. What if something dirty got into the water
pot? Then the children drank directly from the dipper, they put it to
their mouths, and then they gave me water from the same dipper.
I worried about that.
Kaluram tells how surprised he was the first time Dinesh ate with them,
not separately. Dinesh comments: “Because I was a Brahmin, some people
had doubts about me. They thought this is his job, that’s the only reason
he’s doing it. But those who got to know me understood that it was sincere.”
Dayaram fondly remembers a night when they reached someone’s house at
2 a.m. and all ate sweet roṭīs out of the same plate. Dinesh continues:
Everything worried me, eating, drinking water, taking tea. But grad-
ually I learned to do everything, I accepted it, and my courage [him-
mat] increased. Eventually my old ideas went away. When I went
306 Bodies of Song
home to my family, they weren’t happy about it. Even today my wife
won’t eat the leftover food from my plate.37 She says—who knows
where you’ve been going, whose food you’ve been eating? So she
won’t take what’s on my plate. (Kaluram and Dayaram are laughing
in the back seat.) . . .
Changes have taken place in my family. We’ve become much
more open—my brothers and sisters-in-law, the children, even
my parents. The Singaji bhajan mandalī members were all upper
caste, but gradually we invited Kabir mandalī people to sing with
us. Narayanji came several times and led bhajans. Everyone ate and
drank. I said if we’re talking about the sant tradition, singing these
bhajans, and in our own house we don’t act accordingly, what does
that mean? They granted that this was right.
I have learned many things from spending time with the bhajan
mandalīs. I have learned humanity [insāniyat].
Toward a Conclusion
Participants in Eklavya’s Kabir manch—NGO workers, city activists, vil-
lage singers—carried a range of beliefs and aspirations that could be
channeled through Kabir bhajans. Cross-cultural conversations occurred
as people who were primarily motivated by political concerns met with
people whose lived experience with Kabir was primarily religious, musi-
cal, emotional. Sometimes these varying aspects were present within the
same person—an internal dialogue. Some people changed a lot, some a
little, some not at all.
At one end of the spectrum Prakash Kant, a Dewas teacher, left-leaning
social activist, and friend of Eklavya, responded to my usual questions
about “political” and “spiritual”:38
Prakash Kant (PK): We have one clear goal—working for social jus-
tice. Social struggle. To the extent that Kabir supports this struggle,
we embrace Kabir. If Tulsi is useful, we’ll use Tulsi, just as we’ll use
Mira, Ambedkar or Karl Marx. I don’t deny Kabir’s spiritual side. That
is of course present in his works. It’s because of that that he still lives
today, after 600 years. If that weren’t there, we would never have heard
of him.
LH: You are interested in social change and find Kabir useful for that. Do
you personally find any importance in the spiritual side?
PK: Personally I don’t believe anything of that kind. For me it’s useless.
I see problems in society that I want to solve. Other people may sing
and be happy. They don’t feel the need to change society. That’s fine, let
them be happy. But I can’t be happy with that. I need to work for some-
thing else. So I’ll use Kabir as much as possible. Kabir was human, he
had his limits. So for some things, he won’t be helpful in my work. I’ll
have to look elsewhere.
On another occasion Anu and Arvind introduced me to an Urdu poet

named Naim, who lived in Dewas and had been a student of Namvar
Singh at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.39
LH: For you, what represents Kabir’s core message, his actual personality?
What’s most important for you in Kabir?
Naim (N): The courage [himmat] with which he was able to criticize
contemporary society. There’s no one to compare with him in this.
Maybe Nirala has something of that quality, 500 years later. Kabir
was of the “fourth class” [chauthā varg, i.e., a shudra—those born to
serve the upper three classes in the classical Hindu caste system].
He had nothing to do with temples, mosques, or sects. He was com-
pletely against these things. But now they make temples and sects
in his name. Even his wife and children disagreed with him accord-
ing to the stories we have heard. He was an all-around vidrohī, a
resister.
LH: You have talked about the songs that look outward, the social criticism.
What about the songs that look inward, the spiritual ones?
N: (with a broad smile and a dismissive gesture) I’m an atheist, I don’t
have anything to do with God. But probably in India, without the spiri-
tual part, nobody would listen to him or remember him. In this country
you need God to get your message out.
This reminded me of a similar remark by a journalist in Raipur,

Chhattisgarh. Sunil Kumar loved Kabir and hosted a Kabir bhajan pro-
gram in his house when I was visiting. Like Naim, he told me he was an
atheist and had no interest in Kabir’s religious message. “But,” he joked,
“without the religious content, Kabir would have lasted about as long as a
communist slogan.”
308 Bodies of Song
It was interesting to me that the first example Naim cited to illustrate

Kabir’s courage was the great bhajan sung by Dewas’s own brilliant classi-
cal vocalist, Kumar Gandharva—Nirbhay nirguṇ guṇ re gāūngā. I have writ-
ten elsewhere about this song (Hess 2009a, 38–40, 88). The first word,
repeated many times, is nirbhay—fearless.
Naim: When Kumar Gandharva sang Kabir, he sang with such power, from
deep within. One could understand even difficult things just from the
way he sang. Nirbhay nirguṇ guṇ re gāūngā! “Fearless, formless, that’s
the form I’ll sing!” He sang that with tremendous energy and courage.
LH: What is meaningful for you in that song?
N: Whatever you know to be true and right—you should speak it out and
be afraid of nothing.
LH: You keep mentioning the short refrain—nirbhay nirguṇ guṇ re gāūngā.
“Fearless, formless, that’s the form I’ll sing.” What about the rest of the
song, all the stanzas? (pause) Do you know what the other stanzas are?
Do you remember them?
N: (laughing) I don’t remember them!
LH: It’s all about yoga practice. The first stanza is about sitting in a firm
posture and getting control of the muladhār chakra, the lowest cen-
ter. Later it’s about breath, the right, left, and central energy channels,
and so on. He arrives at the pinnacle of emptiness where the limitless,
unstruck sound resounds—shūnya shikhar par anahad bāje. From that
peak he makes his music—chhattīs rāga sunāūngā, “I’ll sing thirty-six
ragas.” Do you think that even symbolically, that peak of emptiness
where you hear such music might be relevant for your social and politi-
cal meanings? [At this point the conversation was interrupted and did
not resume.]
With these and earlier examples, we sketch out a category of educated

people with urban backgrounds who are interested in Kabir as a social
critic and as an ally in political struggle. They may ignore, block out, or
criticize the religious-spiritual aspects of Kabir. They may find that side of
their admired ally annoying, embarrassing, or irrelevant (a position that
Nehru often found himself in vis-à-vis Gandhi). When pressed to explore
the matter further, they may say that Kabir was interested in religion/
spirituality, as are his present-day devotees, but that they are not. They
feel perfectly justified in enlisting Kabir in their struggles in this selective
way—using what is useful, disregarding what is not useful or what might
be counterproductive. Some activists who have engaged deeply with Kabir

and with the community of Kabir lovers and devotees in rural Malwa dis-
cuss the question with sensitivity and nuance, still clearly coming down on
the side of social engagement, outward-turning vision.
In a very different camp, there are hard-line Kabir devotees who attempt
to suppress secular and social-activist readings of Kabir. In one program
Syag-bhāī gave a welcoming speech that linked the teachings of Kabir with
the importance of spreading the benefits of education to all. A local Kabir
Panth mahant stood up and objected: “What does Kabir-sāhib have to do
with the issues of schools, government policies, textbooks? Kabir-sāhib is
telling us only to repeat the divine name and revere the guru. Don’t mis-
guide us!” Just as political activists foreground Kabir’s politically relevant
messages, Kabir Panthi mahants and devout disciples shine a light on
what suits their ideology, emphasizing guru worship, ritual, and recitation
of the divine name.
When Kabir devotees defend their “religious” views, they are not nec-
essarily being apolitical. In some cases they are enforcing their own views
and suppressing others, by means that range from argument to violence.
When some Kabir Panthis objected strenuously to the way Prakash Kant
represented Kabir in his introduction to the Eklavya bhajan booklet, a
decision was made to remove the essay from later editions (see refer-
ences to Prakash Kant, p. 261 above). This was a direct clash of “truths.”
Prakash Kant said, “Kabir was human, so he had his limits.” The protest-
ing devotees said that Kabir was not human but an incarnation of the
supreme being, who manifested himself as an infant on a lotus in a pond.
They were in no way willing to countenance Prakash Kant’s talk of Kabir’s
being born to a woman in a Muslim family, and so on.
Elsewhere I have shown how this kind of censorship has taken a much
more serious turn. Television director Anil Choudhury was attacked and
harassed for years because of an episode of his Kabir serial where Kabir
appeared to be simply human. He was ultimately forced to shut down
the serial. Singer and actor Shekhar Sen was threatened with violence if
he didn’t cut certain parts of his performance at Magahar (stories told in
chapter 7). The most serious incident involving our Malwa friends was
when a squad of Gujarati Kabir Panthis attacked Prahladji and Shabnam
after a 2010 music performance and screening of Kabīrā khaḍā bazār meṇ
in Vadodara. The film (Virmani 2008b) focuses on Prahladji’s relation-
ship with the Dharamdasi Kabir Panth and the nature of its central ritual
(treated at length in chapter 7). Displeased with the content of the film and
310 Bodies of Song
the murmur that Prahladji was an opponent of their guru, they beat up
Prahladji and threw rocks at the window of a car in which the two of them
were trying to escape. The glass shattered over their bodies.
The censorship of Prakash Kant’s introduction gives a hint of what
was at stake for both social-political activists and orthodox Kabir Panthis.
Sectarians were protecting the ideology and authority structure of their
Panth, which was threatened by the historical, human-centered, rational
and egalitarian approach of Prakash Kant’s essay. Eklavya members and
their urban allies, insofar as they “demoted” the popular devotional, spir-
itual, and guru-centered poetry, were protecting their more materialist
worldview, their belief in scientific rationality and social equality.
Through the manch, some of Malwa’s Kabir singers were awak-
ened in a new way to Kabir’s social teaching and its relevance to their
lives. They also came to realize how they had been conditioned by their
religious sects to think narrowly about what it meant to be Kabir’s
devotee. The three profiled in this chapter—Narayanji, Hiralalji,
Kaluramji—took a sharp turn away from institutional guru-worship,
faith in ritual, and acceptance of inequality in the social order. Hiralalji
had moved in this direction long before the manch began and was
thrilled to discover a forum where his convictions about Kabir could
be expressed in a nourishing environment. Influenced by the manch,
Narayanji and Kaluramji moved away from sectarianism and toward
social commitment, assertion of their rights, an agenda of equality and
liberation—all linked to Kabir. But none of them was moved to debunk
or deny the deeper meaning of the “guru,” the appropriateness of sing-
ing songs venerating the guru, or the value of spiritual practice and
experience. They could see a link between Kabir’s poetic evocations of
sublime sound and light within the clay vessel of the body, the dignity
of their own bodies, and the absolute equality of all bodies. They held
these spiritual views together with a healthy skepticism about institu-
tions and the corruptibility of individuals.
The political activists seemed more wedded to the idea of a split
between spiritual and political than the singers. They tended to be put
off by the language of worshiping and abjectly surrendering to the guru.
Though they really respected and liked the singers and said they had no
objection to religious faith, views, and songs, many of them had an alert
system about religion in their minds. Religion was trouble. The Kabir
singers described here were less likely to imagine a sharp divide between
social and spiritual. Inner and outer connected for them. Kabir’s emphasis
on inner freedom, equality and dignity as consequences of nirguṇ devo-

tion, the presence of the highest reality within this body, the nearness and
here-and-now immediacy of what they were seeking, the importance of
karma in this life, not some vague future life, the power of the mind to
bind or liberate—all this was empowering to them.
In a filmed conversation, Shabnam asked Narayanji directly about the
social-spiritual split. “Some say Kabir bhajan singing inspires oppressed
and exploited groups to struggle against injustice. Some say it’s an
escape. People enjoy singing, get lost in the emotion and withdraw from
the world of struggle. What do you think?” Narayanji replied with his
usual look of amused irony: “It depends on the personality. Both things
are possible.” His smile suggested to me that the political zealots and
the religious zealots could both easily get things wrong. Understanding
Kabir called for a more subtle appreciation of his rich multidimensional
messages.
A Last Story
[From my notebook] August 28, 2011
I haven’t stayed in touch with Dinesh Sharma since he left Eklavya
in 2003. About three weeks ago we ran into him in Tonk Khurd vil-
lage. He was in a car with his wife; we were in another car going to
meet one of the “old men’s” mandalīs. We stopped to talk. He was very
thin and told us he had a liver disease. He had been to Mumbai for
surgery. Some days later we heard he was feeling sad and forgotten
by his old companions. So today we organized a visit to his house in
Devali village: Anu, my dear friend from Eklavya; Prahladji; Narayanji;
Kaluramji; and me. He was very weak. He sat up with us for a while,
but had to keep lying down. He showed Anu all the hospital reports.
One of them said, in English, that he had carcinoma of the liver. He
indicated to her that most of his family didn’t know this. We stayed for
three hours. There was tea and conversation. We looked at the wedding
album of his daughter, who got married in 2009. She was sitting with
us, holding her six-week-old baby. At one point, infused by a warm
feeling, he got up and insisted that someone go out and buy samo-
sas to serve us. I convinced the singers to sing, though they had hesi-
tated. There were no instruments. Dinesh made a request: Ab thāro kai
patiyāro pardesī.40 Prahladji closed his eyes for at least a minute, then
started singing in a soft, sweet voice.
312 Bodies of Song
Now how can I rely on you,

you foreigner
you traveler
from far away?
The walls have crumbled, the roof has collapsed,

the roof has mingled with dust, ah yes,
you foreigner,
you traveler
from far away. Ah yes.
As long as there was oil in the lamp, ah yes,

your temple glowed brightly,
Now the oil has run dry, the wick has sputtered out, ah yes,
your temple has gone dark
The shopkeeper’s departed,

the market’s deserted, ah yes.
The lock remains
but he’s taken away the key
Kabir says, listen seekers, friends, ah yes.

Your swan has flown
to a town
beyond death
Dinesh had tears in his eyes. When we left, he got up and walked outside
with us to the car, twenty yards away. We made plans for old friends to
keep visiting him.
August 31, 2011
Prahladji called early in the morning. “Dinesh has expired.” Today we all
went to his cremation—Anu, Arvind, Dinesh Patel and Shobha of Eklavya,
and me. We reached the village cremation ground from Dewas just before
they covered his body with fuel and lit the fire. In fact they waited for us.
Prahladji kept calling on the phone, saying where are you now, how soon
will you be here? There was a platform on the edge of a big pond. Dinesh’s
body was wrapped in white, but his face was showing. It looked warm,
not dead. We each knelt at his feet, then moved toward his head to say a
last goodbye. His son was crying hard, and a few young men kept their
arms wrapped around him. Anu, Shobha, and I were the only women pres-
ent. They lifted the bamboo litter (which Kabir calls a “wooden horse”) and
placed it on stacks of large round cowdung cakes, then piled many more
cowdung cakes on top. They put straw bundles around the edges. The son
and some other relatives went around lighting the straw. It flared up; a
blast of heat hit us. Then everyone sat down across the road to wait. About
a hundred men. They wait till the body is pretty much burnt. It was really
hot, someone guessed 42°C. After a while Prahladji stood up and suggested
we have a shraddhānjalī, “reverent offering,” in which people could say a
few words about Dinesh. He started, then Anu, Arvind, me. Dinesh’s older
brother spoke briefly. Dinesh was only forty-four, the youngest of all the
siblings. The brother asked for a minute of silence before we dispersed.
Everyone was given some pieces of cowdung to throw on the pyre. They
called it something like panchānjalī, “five-offering”—for the five elements.
We went to their house in the village where all the women sat cry-
ing, neighbor women along with family members. Such a clear division of
labor—men outside burning the body, women at home crying. His poor
wife was sitting in a dark corner facing the wall. It was stifling. When Anu
approached and touched her, she cried more and more. The corner was so
hot and airless. I never saw her face but touched her back with my hands.
After some time we left, making eye contact and hand contact with every
member of the family.
Move your cart along lightly,

My Ram is riding.
Move your cart slowly, slowly,
My Ram is riding.
My cart is colored brightly
with wheels of rosy red.
A pretty lady holds the reins.
The passenger is Ram.
What if the cart bogs down in mud

with the destination far?
Those who do good will get across,
the criminals will crash.
314 Bodies of Song
Healers came from every land,

they brought their herbs and roots.
The herbs and roots were of no use
since Ram had left the house.
Four fellows met and soon agreed
to build a horse of wood.
They hauled it to the burning ground.
It blazed up, just like Holi!
The woman sobbed and cried:
We were joined, now we’re broken!
the one who joins
is the one who breaks.
Figure 6.6. Dinesh Sharma with singer Dayaram Sarolia. Photo by

Shabnam Virmani.
7
Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body
It’s a good story, one of the two most often told about Kabir.1 In fact
it’s so good that the Sikhs tell a similar story about what happened on the
occasion of Guru Nanak’s death.2 The master passes on peacefully, but
even before he draws his last breath, his followers (who have been only
temporarily united by his charismatic presence) begin fingering the hilts
of their swords. As the warmth drains from his skin, their temperatures
rise. Soon they are engaging, weapons drawn, in a full-scale confrontation.
Over what? Ritual!
The Hindus want to cremate their beloved teacher to the soothing drone
of mantras from the Veda. The Muslims want to bury him while chanting
verses from the Qur’an. The earliest hagiography of Kabir, Ananta-das’s
Kabir Parachai, says simply, “The Hindus and Turks . . . formed . . . band[s]‌.
One band said, ‘You should burn him.’ The other band said, ‘You should
bury him.’ ”3 Then it tells how his physical body disappeared amid piles
of flowers brought for the occasion. Later embellishments heighten
the drama and give it a political tinge. Nawab Bijli Khan and Maharaja
Virsingh Baghel gallop in with troops. A pitched battle is averted when
someone discovers that Kabir’s body is gone.4 Tellers of the tale commonly
add that, finding only flowers under the shroud, each faction took half of
the flowers to bury or burn, as they pleased.
It’s no coincidence that this story attaches to Guru Nanak and Kabir,
and not to other poet-gurus of the period. Both Nanak and Kabir deliber-
ately occupied an ambiguous space between Hindu and Muslim commu-
nities. In his enlightenment story, Nanak enters a river and emerges after
three days with these words on his lips: “There is no Hindu, there is no
Muslim.” From that formula we can understand that there were Hindus,
316 Bodies of Song
there were Muslims, they were often entangled in rivalries and conflicts,
and Nanak wished to underline the deluded nature of their fighting as he
offered a spiritual truth deeper than their precious religious identities.
Kabir is identified with Muslims by (for example) his name, his Julaha
weaver caste, his parents, and the common appearance of “Sāhab/Sāhib”
as a name for God. He is identified with Hindus by (for example) his guru
Ramanand, his frequent use of yogic terminology, his apparent acceptance
of reincarnation, and the common appearance of “Ram” as a name for
God. The poetry attributed to him features countless satirical jabs at the
foolishness and hypocrisy of both Hindus and Muslims. It also condemns
the general idiocy and viciousness of clinging to one’s own sectarian iden-
tity while attacking others on the basis of theirs. In a famous poem that
resonates with the story of Bijli Khan and Virsingh Baghel (as well as with
murderous communal conflicts today), he says:
Saints, I’ve seen

the world is mad . . .
The Hindu says Ram
is the fountain of love,
the Turk says Rahman.
Then they kill each other.
No one understands.5
This first story of fighting over Kabir, like many to follow, has a special
bite: the fighting devotees have to forget Kabir’s central teachings in order
to engage in the conflict.
A law of cultural politics everywhere is: collective entities will fight over
possession of their heroes, origin stories, and histories; they will also fight
over the proper ways to honor and reinforce their icons and narratives.
These collectivities may be identified in terms of religion, caste, language,
ethnicity, nation, or ideology (to name some obvious examples). When a
sense of the sacred enters the discourse, some of the most interesting
battles will take place on the fields of ritual and myth.6
In this chapter we will learn about contestations in the late twenti-
eth and early twenty-first centuries over narratives, doctrines, and rituals
associated with Kabir. The famous story recounted above suggests that
such debates may have started the moment he ceased breathing. Why
are people still fighting? They are driven by considerations of both power
and faith, and it is often difficult to disentangle the two. Institutional turf
Fighting over Kabir's Dead Body 317
battles involve the usual types of power: control over followers; accumula-
tion of land and wealth; and wielding of political influence.7 The faithful
are driven by personal feelings of devotion; by loyalty to traditions and
gurus; and by fear that they will be in trouble if they don’t believe or behave
as they have been told. In India, religious feelings are protected by law;
people whose feelings are hurt can assert their rights as believers fairly
aggressively, with some confidence that the law is behind them, as we will
see below.
Two main points will emerge from this inquiry. First, studying how
people fight over their heroes, doctrines, histories, and symbols provides
valuable insight into the history of religion. Second, these contestations
take place both publicly and privately, among leaders and followers.
Usually we hear only about the public part: authority figures and pub-
lished documents tell the stories. In this case, we have the opportunity
to see both institutional leaders and ordinary people getting into the fray.
Should the followers of Kabir be doing rituals? Sectarian gurus will natu-
rally express and enforce their views. But in this case, on the issue of the
chaukā āratī ritual, I was also able to observe a dramatic unfolding of the
debate among Kabir devotees in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh.
Thus the story will be both top-down and bottom-up. We will see how the
issues play out institutionally as well as on a more intimate level among
friends and family members.
Kabir Religion
If Hindus and Muslims were hotly contesting their claims to Kabir at the
time of his death,8 that situation soon changed. The Muslims seem to
have lost interest, while Kabir’s Hinduization proceeded rapidly (Lorenzen
1981a). Although he harshly criticized certain Hindu beliefs and practices
(such as divine avatars, image-worship, and caste), there were also many
positive references to Hindu tradition in his poetry.9 On the whole, Hindus
could easily accommodate Kabir in their diverse and flexible religious
spaces. In the fluidity of oral tradition and the dynamics of sect forma-
tion, texts and practices that were compatible with Hindu forms and ideas
flourished.
Soon there was a story to show that Kabir was not really the son of
Muslims, but had been adopted. His true mother? A Brahmin widow, of
course! Why not a Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, or “untouchable”? For the
318 Bodies of Song
same reason that he could not be a Muslim. A great, holy, enlightened

being, according to certain hegemonic views, should be a Brahmin. Today
the story that the newborn Brahmin Kabir was set afloat on a pond at the
edge of Varanasi, to be found and adopted by the Muslim weavers Niru
and Nima, is widely believed by Hindus. Members of the Kabir Panth do
not accept the story of the Brahmin widow, but most of them reject the
idea that Kabir was the biological child of Muslim parents. He was, accord-
ing to most Kabir Panthis I have spoken to, an avatar of God who appeared
floating on a lotus pad on Lahartara Pond at the outskirts of Varanasi. The
Muslim Julahas Niru and Nima became his foster parents after finding
and adopting the miraculous baby.10
The Hinduizing process gained momentum in a sectarian environ-
ment. In its symbols, rituals, and structures of authority, the Kabir Panth
has used generally Hindu and particularly Vaishnav models and termi-
nology: gurus and mahants, āratī and sandhyā pāṭh, dīkśhā and prasād,
tulsī beads, occasional Sanskrit chants, and a likeness of Kabir in the place
normally occupied by a Hindu divine image. But they haven’t imported all
Hindu forms equally. Notably, they tend to refuse caste; their leaders often
speak strongly against caste, and their institutions and functions generally
appear free of caste distinctions. This social emphasis corresponds with
their membership—the vast majority being from formerly untouchable
castes and poor agricultural classes in rural North India.11
The Kabir Panth was founded either prior to the master’s death in
1518 (or 1448) or in the late sixteenth or seventeenth century, depend-
ing on whose story you listen to and what evidence you find persuasive.
Whenever it started, it gradually became heavy with authority, as religious
institutions founded in the names of anti-authoritarian teachers are wont
to do. Naturally, the Panth felt entitled to claim ownership of Kabir. They
were the engine that produced his ongoing honor and glory, along with
thousands—then hundreds of thousands, then millions—of disciples.
They spread his teachings far and wide, kindling the lamp of awakening
in the hearts of initiates. Inspiration from Kabir created the Panth. As
time went on, the Panth created Kabir. After all, he could no longer create
himself. He was dead. As he muses dryly in a poem: “When you die, what
do you do with your body? Once the breath stops, you have to put it away”
(Hess and Singh 2002, 61).
David Lorenzen has studied the history and practices of the Kabir
Panth more extensively than any other scholar. For details, one can refer
to his many articles and books, and for earlier research one can consult
colonial scholars such as Wilson, Crooke, Westcott, and Keay. Here I will
provide a brief introduction.
We don’t know when or where the earliest version of the Kabir Panth
began. There are today several “seats” (gaḍḍī), also called “branches”
(śhākhā), that claim genealogies of gurus going back to Kabir. In this chap-
ter, I refer only to the two largest and most influential traditions, which
I identify as the Kabir Chaura and the Dharamdasi or Damakheda tradi-
tions.12 The word śhākhā, literally “branch,” might give the impression that
the two are related through some central organization, but that is not the
case. They have independent histories, separate guru lineages, distinct lit-
eratures, and a relationship that is not necessarily friendly.13
The Kabir Chaura sect is headquartered at Kabir Chaura Math (mon-
astery) in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), where Kabir himself lived. Its
founding is attributed to Surat Gopal (or Shruti Gopal), a disciple of Kabir.
The Dharamdasi sect is based in the village of Damakheda near Raipur
in Chhattisgarh, a linguistic and cultural region in central India that in
2000 became a state, carved out of the eastern side of Madhya Pradesh.14
Dharamdas, revered in this branch as the most intimate and important
direct disciple of Kabir, is believed to have started the Panth during Kabir’s
lifetime at the master’s behest. The Dharamdasis also call their sect the
“bayālīs vaṃśha” or “forty-two generation” tradition. Kabir prophesied,
they believe, that this sect would remain the authoritative source of his
liberating teachings for forty-two generations of gurus in unbroken suc-
cession. Given that today, after more than five hundred years, they are only
at the fifteenth guru, the prophecy suggests that their gaḍḍī will prevail for
a very long time.
Both the Kabir Chaura and Dharamdasi sects have followers in wide-
spread areas across northern, central, and western India. Both believe
that their tradition started first, and the other followed. Some Kabir
Chaura spokesmen, following scholar Kedarnath Dvivedi, have asserted
that Dharamdas was not contemporary to Kabir but lived at least a cen-
tury later (Lorenzen 1991, 60). Though both Panths accept the Bījak as
Kabir’s authentic composition, for Kabir Chaura the Bījak is the only
sacred and authentic text. The Dharamdasis are ambivalent about the
Bījak and place a much higher value on the Anurāg Sāgar (Ocean of
Love), which they believe Kabir composed and Dharamdas wrote down.
The two works are very different. The Dharamdasis also regard a num-
ber of other works as authentic—many of them having the word sāgar
(ocean) in the title.
320 Bodies of Song
The Dangers of Drama

Yogis say, “Yoga’s the top,
don’t talk of seconds.”
Tuft of hair, shaven head,
matted locks, vow of silence—
who’s gotten anywhere?
Brainy ones, gifted ones,
heroes, poets, benefactors
cry, “I’m the greatest!”
They all go back where they came from
and don’t take anything along.
(Hess and Singh 2002, 53–54)
In 1987, the first episode of a serial on Kabir aired on Doordarshan,

India’s national television network. This was before the genre of reli-
gious serials on TV exploded with the unprecedented popularity of the
epic Ramayan, which went on for over a hundred episodes in 1988–89,
and was followed immediately by the ninety-six-episode Mahabharat.
Kabir was a relatively low-profile enterprise, written and directed by
Anil Choudhury a graduate of the National School of Drama who had
worked in theater before moving into the world of television and mov-
ies in Mumbai. Choudhury was fascinated by Kabir. How did a poor,
low-caste, uneducated member of a Muslim artisan family become
such a powerful and popular figure in Brahmin-dominated Varanasi?
Choudhury read many books, spoke to academic and religious authori-
ties, began writing a script, and shot the first episode in 1985. He loved
the project and described himself as being in a state of naśhā (drunken
joy) while working on it.
But he was soon sobered by a series of lawsuits filed against him by
followers of Kabir, most of them associated with a Gujarati branch of
the Panth. When I met Choudhury in 2003, he spoke of six initial cases,
both civil and criminal, filed in Ahmedabad, Surat, and Delhi. The main
issue was that he had depicted Kabir as a human being, while these Kabir
Panthis believed he was God. According to them, Kabir was not born but
became an avatar when he manifested himself as an infant on Lahartara
Pond. They objected strenuously when the serial showed a nonmiracu-
lous birth and a normal family life, including a mother who slapped him
when he misbehaved. Choudhury described arriving at court hearings to
find hundreds of Kabir Panthi men shouting and brandishing lāṭhīs (long
sticks) at him.
Choudhury’s life became nightmarish. He was threatened and
harassed. Describing a period when he was still trying to produce epi-
sodes, he spoke of spending two days shooting, two days editing, and two
days in court. Ultimately becoming depressed and fearful, he canceled
the project after airing about a dozen episodes. He had to pay heavy legal
expenses himself and suffered serious financial loss. Even in 2003, he was
uneasy talking to me and asked me not to record the conversation. Later
I heard that the number of cases had eventually multiplied beyond the ini-
tial six. Though he claimed that none of the cases had merit and all would
have failed if brought to trial, his attackers were able to make his life a hell
by continuing to file new cases.
It is important to mention that not all Kabir Panthis shared the viewpoint
of those who sued and intimidated Choudhury. Sant Vivek Das—today the
Acharya or top religious authority of the Kabir Chaura tradition, and at
that time too an influential voice at Kabir Chaura—helped and supported
Choudhury through these struggles. (We will hear more of Vivek Das in
the coming section on ritual.)
My conversation with Anil Choudhury took place at the Mumbai resi-
dence of Shekhar Sen, a gifted classical singer, music director, and actor
who had created a one-man play called Kabir. Sen’s show has been very
successful; at the time of this writing, he has done hundreds of perfor-
mances in India and abroad. But he too has felt the repressive hand of
Kabir’s true believers. In 2003, he organized a tour that was also a pil-
grimage for him. It went from Varanasi to Magahar (near Gorakhpur in
U.P.)—the places where Kabir is believed to have been born and died. Sen
had scheduled performances in fourteen places along the way, shoulder-
ing most of the expenses himself.
But as he neared Magahar, a threatening headline appeared in a local
Hindi newspaper: “Rivers of Blood Will Flow If Shekhar Sen Brings His
Show to Magahar.” This time it was sadhus (initiated renunciant followers)
of the Kabir ashram in Magahar, affiliated with Kabir Chaura in Varanasi,
who objected to the way Kabir’s life was depicted. The sticking point for
them was that Sen showed Kabir as a married man with children. They
insisted that Kabir never married and was a celibate sadhu. If the headline
was to be believed, some devotees might be willing to kill for this point!
Just before going to Magahar, Sen had performed to an appreciative audi-
ence in nearby Gorakhpur. A group of young men there suggested that
322 Bodies of Song
they could accompany him to Magahar and beat up anyone who disturbed
his performance, but Sen declined the offer.
Sen met with the mahant, or religious head, of the Magahar Kabir Panth
ashram, along with other locals including sadhus and schoolteachers. They
displayed books that stated that Kabir was celibate, never married, and of
course never had children. Sen replied that he had read all these and more;
that he had other sources that described Kabir’s wife Loi and his son and
daughter Kamal and Kamali; and that one of the Kabir Panthi biographies
they cited made absurd and even obscene claims.15 He declared that Kabir
belonged to all humanity, not just to the Kabir Panth, and he mentioned
that his grandfather was Acharya Kshitimohan Sen—famed as a pioneer-
ing researcher of Kabir’s oral and written poetry in the early twentieth
century, the man who provided Rabindranath Tagore with the texts that
were the source of Tagore’s 100 Poems of Kabir. Kabir, Sen asserted, was
his heritage as much as the Panth’s. Though the mahant at Magahar was
an educated man and sympathetic to the artist’s position, he emphasized
the problem of dealing with believers who had little education and a strong
faith in Kabir as their God. They couldn’t help being extremely upset at
seeing Kabir represented in a way that contradicted what they had been
taught. Saying that he did not wish to cause grief to anyone, Sen agreed to
remove offensive portions of his script in Magahar (but only in Magahar).
Was that the end of the story? No. In March 2006, Sen was to perform
in Surat, Gujarat. He had been invited by one group of Kabir devotees;
but another group sent a telegram stating that his drama was offensive
and had to be stopped. He again offered to speak with them, but before
that could happen, he heard from an attorney associated with the friendly
group. The outraged Kabir Panthis had gone to court to try to restrain him
from performing. The friendly group’s attorney was prepared to defend
him. Sen sent photocopies of literary sources that supported his represen-
tation of Kabir.
At that point in the conversation I became exasperated and asked Sen
why he bothered to defend himself at all. He was an artist and had a right
to write his own script. What law had he broken? What could they do to
him? He reminded me that in India, religious feelings are protected. Along
with obvious offenses such as damaging or defiling places of worship,
disturbing religious assemblies, and trespassing with malicious intent,
the law criminalizes insults, words, or even sounds that offend religious
feelings.16 Though a conviction would result only if the defendant was
found to have injured feelings with deliberate intent, complainants can
hound a person almost indefinitely with accusations and lawsuits. Anil

Choudhury’s woes are testimony to the perils facing an artist who incurs
the enmity of religious groups.
Sen cancelled his Kabir performance in Surat and performed a show
about Tulsidas.17
The Importance of Ritual

Why bump that shaven head on the earth?
Why dunk those bones in the water?
Parading as a holy man,
You hide yourself, and slaughter.
Why wash your hands and mouth, why chant
with a heart full of fraud?
Why bow in the mosque, and trudge
to Mecca to see God?. . . .
Does Khuda live in the mosque?
Then who lives everywhere?
Is Ram in idols and holy ground?
Have you looked and found him there?
Hari in the east, Allah in the west,
so you like to dream.
Search in the heart, in the heart alone.
There live Ram and Karim!
Which is false, Qur’an or Veda?
False is the darkened view.
It’s one, one, in every body!
How did you make it two?
(Hess and Singh 2002, 73–74)
Rituals in the Kabir Panth could be considered inherently controver-

sial, because Kabir debunked rituals. In the poetry it is clear that his prob-
lems with rituals include the delusions and hypocrisies they encourage
and the hard lines of status they reify.
But sects (like nations, families, and individuals) require rituals.
They need ways to solemnize membership, to conjure up the unseen
founder, to renew their vows and symbolize their hopes, all the while
invoking their communion with each other, their continuity with past
and future members, their difference from nonmembers, and the
324 Bodies of Song
differences in status and function among members. They need special

times to get together and do their rituals. Along with ritual structures,
they need structures of authority. Some people have special rights to
interpret the master’s words and tell his stories, initiate new members,
represent the sect, and shape its policy. These special people also run
the rituals and become the vessels of ordinary devotees’ reverence and
faith. They may be in a position to command obedience and receive
material benefits.
Chaukā Aratī and Authority in Two Traditions

of the Kabir Panth
Nearly all branches of the Panth regularly practice a ritual that they call
chaukā āratī. Āratī is a generic term for the most common kind of Hindu
worship, involving various offerings to the divine, with some items being
returned as blessed gifts to the worshipers. It culminates with the waving
of burning lamps before the deity in Hindu settings, or before the guru or
image of Kabir in the Kabir Panth. Chaukā means square and refers to the
specially adorned four-sided space that must be prepared for the rite as it
is practiced in the Panth.
David Lorenzen’s essay, “The Rituals of the Kabir Panth,” describes the
ritual life of Kabir Chaura sadhus and includes translations of key texts
that participants recite and sing in their daily and occasional rites. Though
he is well aware of the ironies of sects and rituals operating in Kabir’s
name, Lorenzen declines the easy critique and concludes that in some
notable ways the form and content of these practices do reflect Kabir’s
teaching:
Kabir Panth rituals are not simply the product of an abject capitula-
tion to the social and cultural pressures that foster Sanskritization,
Hinduization, and socioreligious homogenization. In the first place,
the rituals . . . are quite simple and inexpensive compared to those of
more orthodox Hindu monasteries and temples. More important,
however, is the fact that the Kabir Panth rituals express, in both
actions and words, an implicit opposition to many of the accepted
religious and social norms of more orthodox Hinduism at the same
time that they incorporate the basic structure and many formal ele-
ments of more orthodox rituals. (Lorenzen 1996, 248)
It is this question—whether the rituals give decorous expression to or

make a mockery of Kabir’s teachings—that became a matter of heated
controversy in the Panth leadership and among some devotees a few years
after the publication of Lorenzen’s article.
During the period of Lorenzen’s fieldwork, 1976–94, chaukā āratī seems
to have been an uncontroversial part of the lives of sadhus and lay follow-
ers at Kabir Chaura in Varanasi and its affiliates. Kabir Chaura recognizes
two types of chaukā: the ānandī (“joyful”) and chalāvā (“custom[ary]”).
The former is done on happy occasions such as initiation of new mem-
bers; the latter is done when someone dies. In addition to these two, the
Dharamdasi branch prescribes two more: solah sut (sixteen-son) chaukā
āratī and ekottarī (101) chaukā āratī—the former to celebrate a birth or to
produce progeny, and the latter a very large-scale version of the rite per-
formed only when the supreme guru, the lineage holder, is present.
Gangasharan Das/Shastri,18 for many years the adhikārī or administra-
tive head of Kabir Chaura Math, and for about a decade the Acharya or
religious head, wrote in a guidebook on administration and conduct in
the Panth:
The chaukā is done in a prescribed way by all Kabir Panth devotees,

sadhus and mahants, similar to the way sacrifices [yagya] and fasts
[vrat] are done. If a Kabir Panth disciple or sadhu is ensnared in any
difficulty, he should worship the Lord by means of chaukā aratī, and
the trouble can be removed. Chaukā āratī is a pure form of wor-
ship [sāttvik pūjā], and everyone can do it. By organizing a properly
performed chaukā aratī, a person can be released from all his sins,
and his consciousness can be purified. Ultimately by the grace of
the guru and the supreme lord [parameśhvar], he can attain the state
of kaivalyā [“singleness,” highest meditative state, enlightenment],
and all the bonds of this world will fall away. Chaukā āratī should
also be done on special occasions like births and weddings. At the
time of death, chalāva āratī should be done for the peace of the
[departed] soul. It is very important to do chaukā āratī for the wel-
fare of the world. Chaukā āratī is not the worship of gods and god-
desses [devī deva]. It is worship of the lord through the medium of
the guru. This is the source of human well-being. (Shastri 1983, 8)
The last few sentences indicate the centrality of the guru in this ritual. In
the western square marked as the consecrated seat, a human guru—usually
326 Bodies of Song
an authorized mahant of the Panth—sits and receives the worship. He

becomes the form of the lord.
Dharamdasi literature is more explicit about the origin and meaning
of chaukā āratī. Kabir himself created the ritual and proclaimed that its
practice should continue forever:
In the Kabir Panth, ānandī chaukā āratī is a widespread and uni-

versally respected method of worshipping the guru. It is pūjā of the
manifest satyapuruśh, the primordial brahmā. In it, the visible and
present guru is the very form [svarūp] of Satguru Kabir Saheb. Every
devotee is moved to arrange this pūjā in his/her home, and they do
it with great reverence on every happy occasion. This pūjā is the way
to attain the manifest supreme being. (Prakashmuni Nam Saheb
2004, 15)
The author—who is the Acharya, the lineage holder, of the Dharamdasi

sect—paraphrases a passage from the Anurāg Sāgar that describes the first
performance of chaukā by Dharamdas for Kabir, explaining the spiritual
meanings of various physical actions:
Breaking the straw symbolizes rising above the three guṇas [quali-
ties of material existence]. The kanthī [tulsī bead worn on a string
around the neck] is dedication to satyapuruśh. Taking the name
is attaining the form of the swan [haṃsa], or opening the door of
spiritual knowledge. And to receive the certificate is to attain libera-
tion. . . . This pūjā was held for the first time in the home of Dhani
Dharamdas in Bandhavgarh. Satyapurush Sadguru Kabir Saheb
himself designed it, and this very form has been preserved by the
lineage-gurus and passed on to the faithful. This pūjā is a message
of immortality in the world of death; it is the creation of Satyalok
[the heavenly Realm of Truth] on this earth. The power to do it cor-
rectly rests only with lineage-gurus or with those kaḍihār [“helms-
men,” a term used in the Dharamdasi Kabir Panth for mahants]
whom they select and authorize. (ibid., unnumbered page).19
This chaukā origin story is part of a larger narrative of Kabir’s

becoming an avatar, selecting Dharamdas as the founder of his
“forty-two-generation lineage,” ordaining that Dharamdas and his wife
Amin-mata would produce the first occupant of the gaḍḍī in the form
of their son Muktamani Nam Sahab, and ensuring that all the other lin-
eage gurus would emerge from the same family. These gurus are also
called avatars:
Muktamani Nam Sahab himself is a portion [aṃṣa] of Satyapurush20

with a special form [svarūp], special qualities [guṇ], and special
divine power [śhakti]. From him alone the forty-two lineage hold-
ers are created. They all have special form, special qualities, and
special power. Thus we see that a portion of Satyapurush takes
avatarhood forty-two times in the family of Dharamdasji through
the seed-lineage of Muktamani Nam Sahab, and from them alone
living beings can get liberation. The duties of the lineage-seat
holder and the burden of propagating the Panth are beyond the
capacities of ordinary people. Therefore Kabir Saheb agreed to
send a portion of himself in the form of the forty-two-generation
lineage. (ibid., “o”)
From this, we understand that chaukā āratī is closely linked to main-

taining the powerful authority of the Panth gurus in the Dharamdas tra-
dition. At its center is worship of the guru. During the chaukā, the local
mahant, the lineage holder of the Panth, Kabir, and God (Satyapurush)
are conflated. In addition to being a medium for worshiping Guru-as-
God and God-as-Guru, the chaukā is supposedly able to deliver amazing
practical results, from washing away sin and improving mental health
to seeing God, reaching heaven (Satyalok), and attaining final liberation.
Gṛindhmuni Nam Sahab—father and predecessor of the present lineage
holder, Prakashmuni Nam Sahab—wrote of the centrality and incompa-
rable power of the ritual:
In our lineage, chaukā āratī holds the first place among prescribed
actions. Nothing else has been given as much importance as this.
Whatever auspicious activity or important social work one may
do, nothing can be complete without chaukā. . . . Birth, marriage,
death—in all these circumstances, the completion of chaukā is
essential. Chaukā āratī is a kind of scientific knowledge. In chaukā
āratī the five elements are mingled in a scientific way, and a tre-
mendous power comes forth from this. Both physical and spiritual
components are present in this mysterious creation, and one can
thus gain success in both realms.
328 Bodies of Song
* Chaukā āratī produces many authentic fruits.

* From chaukā āratī, a person’s spirit becomes pure and long-term
bad habits are destroyed.
* Mental problems diminish.
* Doing chaukā āratī sharpens your true intelligence; you can directly
see Satyapurush. The spiritual joy that comes from doing chaukā
āratī is of a world beyond this one. We call that world Satyalok. All
worlds become stainless and beautiful through chaukā aratī; they
become deathless. Through chaukā āratī one is released from count-
less sins, and one attains the supreme being (paramātmā). Without
doubt, through chaukā āratī a person attains a peaceful and auspi-
cious state. (ibid., 101–3)
A Kabir Panth Convocation in Chhattisgarh

For five days in February 2002 I attended the annual melā (fair, gathering)
in Damakheda, a village about two hours’ drive from Raipur, the capital
of Chhattisgarh. Aside from the big buildings in the Panth compound,
the village appears ordinary. But once a year, it fills with countless devo-
tees. People camp in tents, or under the huge canvas cover of the main
assembly area, or in nearby fields. An immense kitchen operation pro-
vides two cooked meals a day to devotees who sit in rows as fast-moving
volunteers ladle vegetables, dāl, and rice from stainless-steel buckets and
drop deep-fried bread on leaf plates. As hundreds finish their meal, hun-
dreds more take their places.
The main organized activity at the melā is listening to discourses
and songs that start in the morning and continue late into the night.
Followers also form long lines to do homage, called bandagī, to the
Acharya of the sect, Prakashmuni Nam Sahab—often referred to as
Huzur-sahab. Carrying coconuts and other offerings, they reach his
presence after waiting in a long queue and enact an individual rite of
devotion, bowing at his feet, looking into his eyes three times, touch-
ing the coconut to their bodies in a prescribed sequence, repeating
sāhab bandagī (“homage to the lord”) and leaving a monetary dona-
tion. Whenever Huzur-sahab emerges from his quarters, he is rushed
by devotees who wish to touch his feet or make a gesture of homage.
Those who can’t get near watch from stairways or other vantage points,
drinking in the experience that Hindus call darśhan—seeing someone
or something holy. In the evening they eagerly await his arrival on the
stage: the climax of the series of speakers and singers who have per-
formed through the day. A rustle of anticipation and three blasts from
a trumpet announce his imminent arrival. He sweeps in with an entou-
rage including two grey-bearded guardians with embossed silver staffs
who stand at attention to the right and left of the stage through his long
presentation.
On my third night at the Damakheda melā, I witnessed ekottarī (101)
chaukā āratī, the grandest form of the ritual, in which the lineage guru offi-
ciates. I saw it again at a melā in Bandhavgarh two months later.21 Manuals
describe ekottarī as requiring the materials of ānandī chaukā multiplied by
101, along with some extra items. These materials include coconuts, fruits,
flowers, betel leaves and nuts, eight types of dried fruit, mango leaves,
cloves, cardamom, saffron, perfume, crystallized sugar, camphor, sandal-
wood paste, and vessels of silver, gold, and brass. The sung and recited
texts are particular to ekottarī.
The chaukā space for the ritual was very large, the array of objects
very elaborate. Scores of mahants in their special costumes, each with a
set of paraphernalia, sat in rows in a roped-off square. Tens of thousands
of devotees were crammed into the area, which became more and more
impenetrable in the circles closer to the guru’s seat. The excitement was
tremendous. When Huzur-sahab entered with his entourage, it was only
with great exertion that monitors could keep the narrow passageway
clear and control the surge of bodies that wanted to move toward him.
Singing continued throughout the ceremonies.
The most dramatic part was the lighting of over 800 ghee-burning
lamps, each wick embedded in a base made of fresh wheat-flour dough.
It took several men ten or fifteen minutes to light them all, and the job
looked dangerous as more and more flames shot upward. I found the heat
under the low canvas roof to be stunning, especially when I climbed onto
a platform to see better. The temperature rose suddenly with the altitude,
and I felt as if my head were on fire. From my vantage point about twenty
yards away, the chaukā area looked like a sea of fire. Smoke filled the air;
only the open sides of the pavilion allowed us to keep breathing. For thou-
sands of devotees, it was essential to approach the Acharya and do bandagī
directly, one on one, before leaving the āratī arena. This process went on
for hours.
330 Bodies of Song
With Kabir Singers and Friends in Malwa

My first extended road trip with Prahladji was to the melā in Damakheda
in February 2002. There I discovered that he had a privileged place on the
stage. He and his group were allowed to sing much longer than others.
The Acharya beamed at him when they were both present. He praised
Prahladji’s wonderful bhajans and sometimes requested favorites. In April
I traveled with the group again to the Bandhavgarh melā. It was on the way
back to Malwa from Bandhavgarh, in the train with family and friends,
that Prahladji revealed to me that he had become a mahant in February.
That moment is described in chapter 1. A controversy about his decision,
about the chaukā āratī ritual and the Kabir Panth, ensued in his local com-
munity and went on until it reached a resolution in 2005.
To understand this controversy, one needs to know about the Eklavya
Kabir manch that is the subject of chapter 6. The manch made Kabir sing-
ers, devotees, and friends of the area a more cohesive and self-conscious
group than they would otherwise have been. While the program was
originally organized by Eklavya staff, internal leadership soon developed
among singers. Prahladji was a highly respected leader in the group.
Others who played prominent roles included Narayan Singh Delmia and
Hiralal Sisodiya, profiled in the previous chapter. Those who gathered on
the second of the month spent countless hours singing and discussing
Kabir, with topics ranging from broad social issues to minute inquiry into
the meanings of words. From these discussions a critique of the Kabir
Panth, its authorities and rituals, developed. I will remind readers briefly
of what Hiralalji and Narayanji reported about this.
On being asked whether Kabir Panthi mahants came to the manch,
Hiralalji said:
Yes, some gurus came. They wore their rosaries, caps, forehead
marks, other marks. But their system, their way of thinking, was
tied to ritualism. Fine, the Kabir Panthis give up drinking, give up
intoxication. But so what, if there’s not a revolution of ideas? The
most important revolution is in your ideas. When a revolution of
ideas takes place within a person, his whole life is turned around.
The person is transformed. . . . In India there are many sects and
schools which have caused all kinds of confusion. Kabir wanted
a revolution of ideas. He wanted people to understand their own
nature. Recognize yourself! The supreme being is not far away!
As far as I understand it, Eklavya’s Kabir manch was a medium

for this—the birth of a revolution in ideas in all human communi-
ties. The goal was to give all people some peace in their hearts and
minds and to encourage the expansion of their imaginations. To
eradicate the confusion, the darkness, in their spirits, and to cre-
ate light. That’s why I was so very happy to discover the Kabir bha-
jan aur vichār manch, and that’s why I went there so regularly. . . .
If someone becomes a Kabir Panthi and wears a rosary or a bead
around his neck, does this mean he has become a good thinker, that
his superstition and obscurantism have been erased?
Narayanji was quite radicalized by his experience with the Kabir manch.
After many years as a locally popular Kabir singer, he realized that he was
still in the grip of superstition and prejudice and was doing the very things
that Kabir criticized. He had worshiped gods and goddesses, but he gave
that up. Though a member of a formerly “untouchable” caste himself, he
had looked down on castes below his in the hierarchy, treating them as
untouchable; he had relied on Brahmin priests for ceremonial functions;
and he had joined the Kabir Panth. Under the influence of the manch,
all this changed. Caste status no longer shaped his behavior. He saw all
people as equal and bearing intrinsic dignity. He was moved by the respect
and love he received from the Eklavya staff, by their freedom from bias and
pretension. He gave up superstitious practices and became critical of the
Kabir Panth mahants, who seemed to be exploiting people, staging rituals
to get money and assert their authority.
By all accounts, Prahladji had shared these kinds of ideas. Certainly
since I had known him, he had always preached passionately against sec-
tarianism, casteism, and other small-minded identities. He tried to under-
mine prejudice, and he emphasized the delusion of searching for truth in
external forms and practices.
By the time I started my research in Malwa, the Kabir manch had been
over for four years. Prahladji had become a regional star, his cassettes
enjoying vigorous sales, his recognition extending to highly placed people.
As reported in c hapter 1, I was not pleased when he told me in April 2002,
on that train coming home from Bandhavgarh, that he had become a mah-
ant. Along with his pointed hat and other paraphernalia, he had received
a panjā, a lengthy official document granting permission to propagate reli-
gion (dharm prachār karnā) and declaring his rights and responsibilities
as a mahant.
332 Bodies of Song
A Dharamdasi Kabir Panth mahant is empowered mainly to do two

things: to preside over the chaukā āratī ritual and to initiate disciples.
He also pledges allegiance and obedience to the Panth and the Panth’s
guru. This did not fit the image of Prahladji that I wished to cherish.
In that train rolling from Bandhavgarh to Malwa, we began our many
discussions and debates on the subject. I was disappointed that he
seemed to be buying into the ritualism and authority structure of the
sect. I dreaded seeing him become more priestly and preachy. It made
me gloomy to contemplate his energy draining from where I thought
it belonged, in his unique calling as a singer, into humdrum sectar-
ian functions that anyone could perform. He argued vigorously and
cogently for his decision. First, he said, many people wanted him to
be their guru, and in effect he was a guru. He had told me several dra-
matic stories about people insisting that he and he alone should initi-
ate them. But he had no authority. He wanted a way to make it official.
Then he argued that the Kabir Panth was doing good work in bringing
Kabir-sāhab’s message to so many people. There was nothing wrong
with rituals as long as one didn’t perpetuate delusions about their pur-
pose. Rituals were just a way of bringing people together to share under-
standing of Kabir and to encourage them to lead good lives.
For several years, Prahladji had hosted an annual Kabir festival on
land adjacent to his house, which the state government had granted for
the creation of an institute devoted to Kabir. In 2002, the function was
scheduled for May 25—Buddha Purnima, the full moon night commemo-
rating the Buddha’s birth and enlightenment.22 On that day, in extreme
heat, I was slowly moving around observing preparations. Ambaram’s
son Dharmendra was on a ladder in the simple temple that Prahladji had
built, pasting bright paper flowers between painted verses of Kabir. A tall
festive gateway had been erected. White triangular flags flapped from
poles and rooftops, bearing the motto satyanām (true name). Huge tents
without walls were set up to shelter the audience. Dozens of people were
making food.
I saw Shantiji, Prahladji’s wife, cleaning the wide front verandah of the
house with a purifying solution made from cowdung. Then Kabir Panthi
sadhus started extending cords, hanging strings of flowers, spreading cloth
seats. Meanwhile, spectators and singers, sadhus and gurus, were drifting
in. Prahladji was rushing from place to place, looking after arrangements
and welcoming guests. He had slept very little in the past few days; his
voice was hoarse. His family members were in the same condition.
In the late afternoon a crowd suddenly materialized near the house.

I got there just in time to see events take a dramatic turn. This was the
performance of Prahladji’s first chaukā āratī. I was taken aback by how
weighty and solemn it felt. At one end of the crowd, two attendant sadhus
were dressing him in special clothes—a long shirt, beads, yellowish marks
on forehead and arms, the hat. Then he walked gravely to the verandah,
stepping on a cloth pathway, not at all his usual social self. He sat down
on the gaḍḍī, the special seat in the center of the chaukā. I had heard that
this was “Kabir’s seat.” Many devotees believed that the person who sat
there became Kabir himself. I watched Prahladji being worshiped by a
series of people starting with his wife, then his son and daughter-in-law
(the married women with their faces completely covered, in ghūnghaṭ, as
is customary in this community), and other family members, waving the
tray that contained flaming wicks and ritual materials.
Prahladji and his attendants went through the order of the chaukā,
chanting, gesturing, moving things around, according to the ritual rules.
At the heart of the event, dozens of individuals went before him one at
a time to do bandagī; they knelt at his feet, offered a coconut and some
money, and went through a routine of looking up at his eyes, then down
again, three times, while placing their joined hands in right, left, and cen-
ter positions. I did it too. He appeared to be very concentrated, acknowl-
edging no one in a personal way.23
Eventually those who wished to “take the name,” or be initiated by him,
did so, one at a time. He whispered the mantra in each one’s ear and gave
them a kanthī, a single tulsī bead on a string to wear around their neck.
His feet were washed and the water distributed as charaṇāmṛit, a holy sub-
stance. Most people received a few drops in their cupped right hand and
swallowed them. Then prasād was distributed, as usual in a Hindu rite of
worship—cut-up fruits and little sugar balls. Everybody wants prasād. It
transfers the holy essence of the rite in a concrete form, conferring bless-
ings. By that time I had retreated to one of the rooms off the verandah,
as the crowd had become suffocating. Prahladji’s wife came in, smiling
broadly, offering prasād. “Take this,” she said, “it’s a ticket to Satlok.” Was
she serious? Her smile was a bit mischievous. Satlok is the Kabir Panth’s
version of Heaven. It means “World of Truth.” Kabir Panthis sometimes
talk about it as if it’s a place where good devotees can go when they die.
Later that night, as he introduced the singing program, Prahladji gave a
speech. Once again he said what I’d heard him say so often: that it doesn’t
matter whether you wear white clothes or red clothes or no clothes; if
334 Bodies of Song
Figure 7.1. Prahladji performs chaukā āratī ritual during his period as a mahant
of the Kabir Panth. Photo by Smriti Chanchani.
you’re not pure inside, if your way of living, your thoughts and deeds, aren’t
right, then all your appearances are just a show, a sign of your pride. Then
he said: “May it never happen that I think like this—I am a great bhajan
singer or a mahant or somebody who holds a high position. May that never
happen. If you see me with that kind of pride, you should understand that
I have fallen.” His voice started to crack as it often did, but this was differ-
ent. I realized he was crying. He was praying and crying, on that day when
the pomp of mahantship had begun for him and he’d passed the mantra
to his first crowd of initiates, praying that he wouldn’t get lost.
The Debate
For the next three years, my Kabir-connected friends in Malwa were debat-
ing Prahladji’s decision to be a mahant and to do chaukā āratī. Hiralal
Sisodiya said, “For all those years in the Kabir manch he was with us, criti-
cizing pomp and pretension, mahants and rituals. Now look! He’s a mah-
ant himself, and he’s doing chaukā āratī. What’s going on?”
A relative of Prahladji told me that the whole family was upset when
he became a mahant. First they worried it was a step toward leaving the
family entirely, as he had tried to do on a previous occasion (chapters 1 and
2 tell that story). The other reason was that he had been an articulate critic
of the sect and its rituals, but now he had no ground to stand on. “It’s like
someone smoking cigarettes but telling other people not to smoke.”
Hiralalji told stories about his own habit of publicly challenging mah-
ants and their followers (see his profile in chapter 6). Narayanji, who
had known Prahladji for many years, had often sung with him, and was
related by marriage, was disturbed and critical. In the 1990s he had come
to believe that the Kabir Panth mahants did more harm than good. He
had seen evidence that some of them were corrupt, that their positions of
authority in local communities could easily bring out the worst in them.
He and Hiralalji both described chaukā āratī as a kind of business (vyāpārī)
or setting up shop (dukāndārī) to get money and gifts. They felt it exploited
poor people. They also felt it encouraged superstition, whereas Kabir had
relentlessly attacked superstition. Panth gurus and official writings prom-
ised that people would be delivered from their sins or would attain heaven
or final liberation by participating in chaukā āratī. What could be farther
from Kabir’s real teaching? It led people astray and sent the wrong mes-
sage to the next generation.
Narayanji also said with a smile that had a tinge of disgust, “They are
drinking the water that they use to wash his feet.”
I was not neutral. I had become close to Prahladji and the whole fam-
ily. In August 2002 (as described in chapter 1), I had ritually become
Prahladji’s sister with corresponding ties to everyone else in the family.
I felt more free to argue with Prahladji without there being any question
about the underlying love and trust between us. Being his elder sister,
I actually had the right to criticize and make jokes about him—which the
rest of the family, conventionally tied to deference and obedience to the
male head of household, found quite enjoyable.
In 2003, Shabnam Virmani had joined our circle, working on her
series of films and audio CDs in which Prahladji would figure promi-
nently. One of the four feature-length documentaries she eventually
produced focused on stories and issues about the Kabir Panth, chaukā
āratī, and Prahladji’s role as mahant (Virmani 2008b). From Malwa
to Damakheda, from Delhi to New York, Shabnam and I would spend
countless hours with Prahladji and his singing group, along with other
friends and relatives. Accounts of our discussions about his decision to
336 Bodies of Song
become a mahant and perform chaukā āratī, which could fill many pages,
are summarized here.
When challenged, Prahladji did not back down but gave arguments
for the value of ritual that students of religion will find familiar. Ritual
creates community. It is necessary for initiation, giving and receiving the
name, an act by which people make a commitment to join Kabir’s tra-
dition. Kabir’s teachings communicate on many levels, and most people
aren’t ready right away to understand the highest teachings. Ritual helps
them to begin the process. On these occasions, they can listen to Kabir’s
songs and receive good guidance. If abuses or delusions have developed in
the way ritual is practiced, a wise leader can remove them. Prahladji made
a point of telling participants that the chaukā āratī had no magic powers
and that receiving the name in itself would not transform their lives. They
had to change their behavior and deepen their knowledge. They should
never think that the Kabir Panth was the only true religion. It was just a
path like other religious paths. They should never shrink the greatness of
Kabir down to narrow sectarian attitudes.24
Of course there were many people who did not criticize Prahladji’s
mahantship. They accepted the forms and structures of the Panth and
associated his new activities with a good tradition. Many wanted to be his
disciples.
Prahladji felt the pressure from former comrades in Eklavya’s Kabir
manch as well as from me and other urban friends. Occasionally he
would laughingly admit defeat in a discussion and resolve not to do
chaukā āratī anymore. But then he would do it again. He would say
that he was helpless, that people insisted that he do it, and he couldn’t
say no.
In 2004, when Shabnam was shooting her film about Prahladji and
the Panth, he was expressing somewhat heretical views even while con-
tinuing to practice as a mahant. At a Kabir Panth melā with Shabnam,
standing aside from the main activity, he said:
I want people to complain about me here, so that there will

be some debate. Otherwise there’s none. Who has raised any
debate up to now? Whatever Sāhab [the head guru] does, every-
one follows. That’s what I’m supposed to do too, go by the
book. But I won’t. If I don’t agree with something, I won’t do it.
Whoever agrees, let them do it. If there’s any trouble, I’ll face it
[smiling]. Maybe Kabir-sāhab will be angry with me! They may
call me an enemy of the guru [gurudrohī] [laughs]. There’s a

book of poetry about the greatness of the guru that has such
sākhīs, it’s unbelievable. Anyone who lets his ears hear criti-
cism or insults of the guru will go deaf, or will go to hell. Or
if you listen to any insult of the guru, you’re a criminal and
should be beaten up [laughs]. . . . Or it’s a sin to set foot on the
shadow of your guru. That kind of thing. But what is a guru?
Kabir says, “ye sab guru hai had ke, behad ke guru nāhīṇ—these
are all gurus of the limited, there’s no guru of the limitless.”
Who is the guru of the limitless (behad ke guru)? “Behad apne
aap upaje, anubhav ke ghar mahin—the limitless comes forth
by itself in the house of experience.” When you break through
these boundaries, there’s no need for all this [gesturing toward
the forms of the sect]. 25
Eventually Prahladji introduced innovations in the chaukā. He

stopped sitting in the ritual square dedicated to Satguru Kabir.
Leaving it empty, he sat to the side. He forbade distribution of the
charaṇāmṛit, the water from his own foot-washing. He told people
that showing reverence to the guru was fine, but they shouldn’t be
clamoring to do bandagī, bowing and scraping to him excessively.
“When do you do bandagī? When there are two. But now you and
I have become one, so where’s the need for bowing?” He refused to
take money, or allowed only a symbolic offering of a rupee or two. He
stated that mahants should not expect to get their income from ritual
activities but should earn a living from their own work, as Kabir did.
Satsang (gatherings with songs and discourses), nām-dān (giving the
name, initiation), and chaukā aratī should be done as service, with-
out pecuniary rewards. On a trip to Maharashtra in 2002, I noted
his saying, in a conversation with other mahants, that more than
90 percent of mahants take on that role only to fill their stomachs
and collect cash. He defined the true guru–disciple relationship as
one in which there is no len-den (giving and taking), a relationship
where participants freely give knowledge and respect, not money and
goods. 26
News of these innovations and critiques reached the sect leadership in
Damakheda. They were not pleased. They did not like his presumption
that he could unilaterally change the established form of the chaukā. They
did not like the imputation of corruption among mahants.
338 Bodies of Song
Ire of the Acharyas

Prahladji liked meeting different gurus. He had taken initiation in sev-
eral nirguṇ sects over a period of twenty-five years, including the Nath
Panth, Radhasoami, the Damakheda Kabir Panth, and the Parakh Panth
of Abhilash Das. Though he was now sure that he wouldn’t deviate from
the Kabir Panth, he still respected the gurus of different branches and
sometimes visited leaders of traditions other than Damakheda. He had a
dream that all the sectarian groups might get past their differences and
unite in the larger cause of serving Satguru Kabir. When in Delhi, he often
went to the Kabir Bhavan, a new center built by Vivek Das, the religious
head of the entire Kabir Chaura network.
Vivek Das became the Kabir Chaura Acharya in 2000. In his early
youth, by his own account, he had been a Naxalite, or member of a revolu-
tionary Maoist movement that organized violent uprisings in the pursuit of
justice for the poor and disenfranchised. Coming to understand the futil-
ity of violence, he became a Kabir Panthi (see closing scenes of Virmani
2008b). He was a young sadhu when I first visited Kabir Chaura in 1976.
After the death of the elderly Acharya Amrit Das in 1988, I had heard there
was some jostling for leadership. For over ten years the more conserva-
tive Gangasharan Das—who at a certain point had begun to call himself
Gangasharan Shastri, indicating his wish to take on a more Brahminic
identity—had held the position of Acharya. But after some wrangling and
deal-making, Gangasharan had moved to a temple on the bank of the
Ganges, and Vivek Das had assumed leadership at Kabir Chaura.
Gangasharan Shastri supported the long-observed tradition of chaukā
āratī. He also unhesitatingly called himself a Hindu and a Vaishnav.27
Soon after taking leadership, Vivek Das came out strongly against chaukā
āratī. In a conversation in 2002, he told me he was urging his followers
not to do it, though he wasn’t strictly forbidding it. He also said that he
was about to publish an aggressive critique of the Dharamdasis, who in his
opinion did not deserve to be called Kabir Panthis. Having just enjoyed the
hospitality of the Dharamdasis, I challenged Vivek Das on the usefulness
of attacking rival factions of the Panth. I pointed to the title of a book he
had edited, Ḍhāī akśhar (Two-and-a-Half Letters). In a famous couplet of
Kabir, those letters spell prem, love, which is said to contain more wisdom
than all the holy books of the pandits. If this is so, I asked, then why spend
your time attacking other people who are devoted to Kabir? Don’t you have
better things to do? Vivek Das replied, “I do many other things, but this is
important too. Kabir was aggressive. He attacked deluded people. If peo-

ple are on the wrong road, Kabir would not hesitate to say, ‘You’re on the
wrong road.’ ”
In two books published in 2003, Vivek Das invokes the radical Kabir
who stood against conventional religion, questioned authority, and sati-
rized pretension and superstition. He attacks a tendency in the Panth that
he calls paurāniktā, meaning doctrines, stories, texts, and practices that
mimic the Sanskrit Puranas and the Vaishnav traditions associated with
them. The number-one offenders are the followers of Dharamdas:
In the middle of the seventeenth century, paurāniktā swept into the

Panth like a storm. Dharamdas was the leader of this. Dharamdasji
was a Vaishnav devotee who accepted the Kabir Panth after coming
under the influence of a Kabir Panthi sant. As soon as he arrived,
there was an influx of paurāniktā so overpowering that a question
mark was placed over all the actual facts about Kabir. In the form
of false dialogues between Kabir and Dharamdas, dozens of books
were composed (Anurāg Sagar, Bodh Sāgar, etc.). Because of these
Puranic writings, ordinary people were led far from Kabir’s true
wisdom. In these “ocean” (sāgar) volumes, buckets full of insults
and filth were unloaded on Kabir’s contemporary disciples. His dis-
ciples were addressed as thief, . . . dweller in hell, and other demean-
ing terms. The Bījak, Kabir-sāhab’s basic work, is the universally
revered religious text in the Kabir Panth. But in these Puranic
“ocean” books, the Bījak’s wisdom is referred to as the worms in the
guler fruit, and the composer of the Bījak is called the messenger of
death. (V. Das 2003a, preface)
Vivek Das criticizes the Dharamdasis’ propagation of an avatar theory, not

only about Kabir, but also about the progeny of Dharamdas who ascend
to the leadership of their “forty-two-generation” lineage. He criticizes the
notion that Kabir’s closest disciple was an extremely wealthy merchant.
He brands the “ocean” literature as 99 percent lies. And he underlines the
fact that all these books promote chaukā āratī.
In a volume called Ghaṭ kā chaukā (The Chaukā in the Body), Vivek
Das attacks the chaukā ritual and the centrality it has assumed in the lives
of Kabir Panthis. The main text is based on a lecture that he gave to Kabir
Panthis in Trinidad and Tobago. They had mounted a major chaukā āratī
for his visit on the full moon of the month of Kartik [according to the
340 Bodies of Song
Hindu system of lunar months]. He scolds them heavily for doing so. His
language is vivid, his condemnation unequivocal:
Kabir-sahab opposed these phony forms of worship.

Kabir gave a great message of awakening, and today his follow-
ers have joined the Idiot Panth, the Puranic Panth.
Worshiping through the chaukā āratī is a powerful assault on
Kabir’s revolutionary ideas. (V. Das 2003b, 4, 20, 25)
Vivek Das sarcastically dismisses the priestcraft, the expense, the greed
for offerings, and above all people’s deluded belief that they will avoid
death by breaking coconuts or achieve liberation by writing a mantra on
a betel leaf and then eating the leaf. He declares that these delusions are
destroying the Kabir Panth. After cataloging the sorts of external practices
that Kabir rejected, he says, “To know the spiritual self within your own
body is the essence of all worship” (V. Das 2003b, 7). His title, Ghat kā
chaukā, recalls the earliest reference to the chaukā in the ritual texts that
Lorenzen studied.28 There seems to be an understanding, rooted in early
layers of the Panth, that the outer chaukā is only a symbol of an internal
process of transformation:
The chaukā that Kabir-sahab wanted to tell us about is the chaukā

inside every human being. That is what we need to know, that is
the light we need to kindle and spread. Only then can we break the
head of the lord of death. Without that, even if we break a thousand
coconuts, even if we perform not just 101 but thousands of chaukā
aratīs, we’ll get no benefit. (V. Das 2003b, 29)
In this essay too, Vivek Das emphasizes that the worst offenders, the great-
est purveyers of ritualized delusion, the leaders in turning the Kabir Panth
into a Puranic fools’ Panth, are the Damakheda-based Dharamdasis (see
V. Das 2003b, 21).29
In the Dharamdasi melās that I had attended, Prakashmuni Nam
Sahab also criticized rival branches of the Panth. Though he did
not single out Kabir Chaura in 2002, he spoke sharply against dis-
sident groups of Dharamdasis that split off from the mainstream,
and he strongly underlined the authenticity and sole authority of the
forty-two-generation lineage. The crucial importance of the chaukā
āratī ritual cannot be questioned in the Dharamdasi Panth. Once when
I mentioned to one of the Prakashmuni Nam Sahab’s close lieutenants

that I hoped to ask the Acharya some questions about chaukā āratī, he
responded somewhat angrily, suggesting that I didn’t understand the
chaukā’s real meaning or the challenges of transmitting Kabir’s teach-
ing to followers with little or no education.
Perhaps failing to appreciate the seriousness of their differences, or
hoping despite everything to bring them together, in 2004 Prahladji
invited both Acharyas to grace the occasion of the annual Kabir cel-
ebration that he hosted in his village. But he went one step further: in
published announcements of the event, he indicated that both would
actually be there. Later he said that this was a mistake, that he had only
meant to mention both as sources of inspiration. But he was severely
upbraided in phone calls from Damakheda for publishing such a
claim without getting Huzur-sahab’s permission. That same year, at
the annual melā in Damakheda, the climate changed dramatically for
Prahladji. Huzur-sahab was not only chilly. He made critical remarks
about Prahladji when they were seated on the stage before tens of thou-
sands of people.30
Things came to a head in June 2005, when Acharya Vivek Das asked
Prahladji to perform on Kabir Jayanti (Kabir’s birthday) at his center in
Delhi. Prahladji agreed, and the publicity was circulated. When Acharya
Prakashmuni Nam Sahab heard of it, he summoned Prahladji to appear
before him in Raipur, Chattisgarh, nearly 800 miles away from Delhi, on
the same day. Prahladji refused, citing his prior commitment. There was a
showdown in which Prahladji defied the command of his Panth guru, stat-
ing that his loyalty is only to Kabir, not to any Panth. He stayed away from
the required annual meeting of mahants in Damakheda. In October 2005,
a gathering of mahants convened by the Acharya took disciplinary action.
Pradladji’s panjā, or authorization to be a mahant, was revoked. The days
of wearing the pointed hat and conducting chaukā āratī were over.
“Isn’t it ironic,” I asked Prahladji one day in his village house, “that
you had dreams of bringing together all the different Kabir Panths—you
thought you’d unite Vivek Das, Prakashmuni Nam Sahab, Abhilash Das,
and the rest—and now you seem to have aroused even more enmity and
factions?”
“What did I know,” he replied, “when I took dīkśhā from Abhilash Das
in 1994? I thought the Kabir Panth was all one thing, not Varanasi and
Damakheda and Allahabad and Kharsiya and on and on.” He laughed and
walked out of the room.
342 Bodies of Song
Conclusion
Popes wear tall hats, observant Jews wear yarmulkes, mullahs wear
beards, Sikhs keep their hair uncut, the Dalai Lama shaves his head.
Tibetan Buddhists, while teaching nonattachment and emptiness, prac-
tice some of the most elaborate rituals on the planet. Taking a break from
my research in Malwa one year, I went to Dharamsala where the Tibetan
government-in-exile is based. There I witnessed a “long-life ceremony”
for the Dalai Lama, who had recently recovered from a serious illness.
Monks in rows droned hallowed verses. Bells and long-necked trumpets
resounded. A veritable mountain of offerings rose on one side of the
sacred space—foodstuffs and other items symbolizing nourishment and
life. The Dalai Lama himself received the community’s good wishes, so
complexly bodied forth in physical form, with his usual smiling grace.
Euro-American guests in a special reserved section (myself among them)
seemed happy and respectful. I have never heard admirers of Tibetan
Buddhism seriously criticize the Tibetan penchant for ritual in light of the
Buddha’s simple lifestyle and teaching of emptiness.
Why did a controversy over ritual erupt among Kabir devotees in Malwa
and elsewhere in the early 2000s? Why did I feel invested in it? How was
this controversy related to the fights over whether Kabir was born in a
lotus or from a woman’s body, and whether he was celibate or had biologi-
cal children? What was at stake?
Everyone concerned had a stake in the representation of Kabir: the cen-
tral leaders and local authorities of the Panth; the singers; the devotees;
the scriptwriters for stage and screen; the American scholar-translator; the
Indian filmmaker. Some of us, while deeply admiring the character and
poetry of Kabir and believing in the value of his contributions to human-
ity, also receive material gain and worldly recognition from our association
with Kabir. Devotees who don’t make a profit from the master still build
their identity around him. No one is disinterested.
Like all organized religions, the Kabir Panth has found ritual indis-
pensable in maintaining itself institutionally. Ritual creates solidarity,
distinction, authority. It provides symbols and concepts that are easy to
understand, even if there are also claims of deeper meanings. It gives peo-
ple something to do.
The Dharamdasi Kabir Panth has followed one well-traveled road in
the history of religions by claiming that the founder of the religion actu-
ally established the ritual and enjoined its performance. They show this
founding moment in a sacred text that was, they affirm, dictated by Kabir.
Going even further, they claim divinity not only for the master but also
for the lineage of gurus he established. The ritual specifically enacts wor-
ship of the guru and his duly named representatives, powerfully enforcing
authority and obedience. In the normal course of human affairs, the ritual
becomes a source of income for some mahants.
The Kabir Chaura branch of the Panth has used chaukā āratī in the
usual ways—to solidify the community, to provide followers with symbols
and prescribed acts, to promote guru-devotion, to get donations. But since
Kabir Chaura believes in only one authentic book of Kabir’s compositions,
the Bījak, and since the Bījak says nothing of the ritual, they don’t claim
that Kabir commanded its performance. They also don’t have father-to-son
succession in leadership of the lineage, or any claim to avatarhood of the
Acharyas.
Vivek Das has taken another well-precedented course in the history
of religions, that of the reformer. Harking back to the “original” teaching
and spirit of Kabir, he excoriates the accretion of ritual, superstition, and
mythology. He notes that the main rival branch of the Panth has tried to
delegitimize his branch by insulting and demoting the Bījak. He comes
back with harsh arguments that serve to delegitimize the rival, at the same
time promoting reform within his own organization.
On the ground, all these things look much more personal.
Coming from a very poor rural family and a low-status caste, Prahlad
Singh Tipanya achieves fame, prosperity, and respect as a Kabir singer and
teacher. But he still longs for the legitimacy of institutional affiliation, the
authority of conventionally sanctioned guru-hood.
His family members support his decisions; they don’t have much
choice. But some express discontent, saying he should not have become a
mahant and should not be doing chaukā aratī.
Some of Prahladji’s old comrades from the Kabir manch criticize him
based on their understanding of Kabir’s message. They are convinced
he has taken the wrong path, which they find all the more regrettable
as he has become powerful and influential. But there are other layers
in this conversation. Some people (not the ones named in this chapter)
resent his success and his seeming to turn away from them. Some, while
speaking of Kabir, also have issues that are more local and personal.
Linda, the American scholar-translator of Kabir, and Shabnam, the film-
maker from Bangalore, play their roles. Whether actively taking a position
or simply witnessing as the camera rolls, they are not taken lightly. They
344 Bodies of Song
are impressive and well funded; they are enthusiastic and warm; they sing,
laugh, and debate; they become friends, sisters, aunties. Both are highly
educated, politically secular, and left-leaning; both are inspired by what
they see as Kabir’s nonsectarian spirituality, remarkable independence,
and social radicalism; both have their educated urban constituencies to
think about.
Then we have to remember the Kabir bhajan evam vichār manch. It
is likely that this controversy wouldn’t have occurred at all—at least not
on the scale that it did—had it not been for Eklavya’s sponsorship of the
manch in the 1990s. We can never know for sure how crucial Eklavya’s role
was, but it was certainly important.
In these concluding remarks, the top-down observations (about sect lead-
ers, institutional motives, historical patterns in religion) may come across as
more cogent than those that reflect bottom-up movements, global crosscur-
rents, and personal relationships. Fragmentary glimpses of people’s lives
and interests do not add up to a clear conclusion. But I sometimes think that
fragments reflect reality better than perfectly cogent arguments.31
The Last Laugh

Kabir says, when I was born,
the world laughed and I cried.
Let’s hope that when it’s time to go,
the world will cry and I’ll laugh.
Everyone knows the main meaning of this popular couplet. Babies

are born crying while their families celebrate. Kabir hopes to live a good
life—in which case, people may be sad to see him go. And he hopes to be
so free of attachment to this life, so fearless, that he’ll go out with a smile
while others cry in sorrow.
Kabir was quite serious, but he also had a great sense of humor. The
matters we have been discussing are both serious and funny. With his
sharply penetrating insight, did Kabir know that his followers would fight
over his dead body? Was the decision to have a good laugh an alternative
to despair? Do we, his followers and admirers, keep reconstructing his
body and then arguing over how to dispose of it? Is he still laughing?
8
Political / Spiritual Kabir

jal meṇ kumbh kumbh meṇ jal, bāhar bhītar pānī
phūṭā kumbh jal jal hī samānā, yah sab akath kahānī
pot in water water in pot

outside inside
water
pot shatters
water merges
with water
you’ll never tell
this tale
To conclude the time we have spent together (300-plus pages here

imagined as time), let us reflect on outside and inside. In considering
Kabir oral traditions, we have looked at texts, performers, audiences, cir-
cumstances, and interpretations. This closing chapter is in the realm of
interpretation, but by now we are aware of how all the other elements
come together to give rise to interpretation.
I conclude on this particular interpretive question—“political/spiri-
tual,” placed parallel to Kabir’s “outside/inside”—because it has turned
out to be a preoccupation for me and for many Indian friends and col-
leagues who study, perform, revere, love, and deploy Kabir. A previous
chapter was devoted to this topic as it plays out among singers, admirers,
and devotees of Kabir in Malwa. Here the conversation is more urban, and
it ranges more widely. We start with India and Kabir, then venture into
periods long before Kabir in India and into places beyond India, looking
at examples of music and spirituality intersecting with, or veering away
from, politics and society.1
The discussion is broad, but the argument that drives it is particular.
Many left-leaning thinkers, activists, and social workers (with whom I often
align politically) are repelled by religion. Influenced by Marxian thought,
346 Bodies of Song
they tend to see religion as false and retrogressive. Materialist in orienta-

tion, they label religion as otherworldly and superstitious. “Spirituality” isn’t
any better, as they associate the term with “spirits,” nonmaterial wraiths
that people unfortunately believe in. Marxian or not, social justice activists
may be put off by antirational, antiscientific, quietist tendencies in religion,
and these associations spread beyond religion to other human activities
“tainted” by emotion, receptivity, acceptance, surrender. In this chapter
I address the sense of alienation between “religious/spiritual” and “social/
political.” Some of us feel a longing to reconcile them, but we should recog-
nize that there is good reason for the alienation. Both the conflict and the
longing to reconcile are fundamental. We could evoke it in a variety of word
pairs: “surrender/control,” “acceptance/struggle,” “one/two,” “passion/dis-
passion.” The word “love” might come up. Kabir seems to be interested in
how we grapple with seemingly irreconcilable opposites.
This is the big fight, King Ram.

Let anyone settle it who can.
***
You can get free by your own strength

or the beloved can free you.
***
If I say yes it isn’t so,

and I can’t say no.
Between yes and no a space
my true guru’s place.
I propose that we can reasonably interpret Kabir texts as supporting

the coexistence and mutual nourishment of inner and outer, spiritual and
political; that there is also good reason to think of spiritual and political
as opposed to each other; and that it is necessary, in historical and social
analysis, to discover not only how texts may be interpreted but also how
people have actually applied those texts to their lives and struggles. It is
not enough to say that in principle Kabir supports the interdependence of
inner and outer. We need to observe how people have brought political and
spiritual together or kept them apart and in what ways they have argued
for their interpretations. Kabir becomes political when people engage with
Political/Spiritual Kabir 347
him in the political sphere—a fact that will be illuminated through the his-
tory of the American folk songs known as Negro spirituals.
We will, of course, have to define the terms—spiritual, religious, politi-
cal. As usual, we start with a story.
Fear of Bliss
We are in Delhi’s Habitat Centre, that expansive campus of art galleries,
theaters, and cafes where scenes of high culture unfold every day. It is
December 2002. Memories of communal slaughter in Gujarat, like the
aroma of fresh blood, trouble our minds.2 Many artists and intellectuals
have had their say since the carnage of February and March, taking a stand
against the politics of violent, hate-fueled religious nationalism. Tonight
painting, poetry, and music come together to evoke a different vision of
Indian culture. Acclaimed artist Haku Shah has created a series of paint-
ings based on texts of great Sufi and sant poets. The marvelous Hindustani
classical singer and social justice activist Shubha Mudgal has composed
music for the poems. The brilliant literature professor Alok Rai has writ-
ten an essay for the exhibition catalog, and he will introduce tonight’s per-
formance. They all share this message: the India we wish to identify with
and strengthen is one of richly intermingling cultures, where Hindus,
Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians, along
with the unaffiliated and nonbelievers, at least respect and at best appreci-
ate each other, and where secular democratic institutions uphold the equal
rights and safety of all. The poetry of Islamic Sufism and Hindu bhakti
celebrates this deep-flowing culture and criticizes intolerant, oppressive
sectarianism and casteism. Tonight we allow the combined powers of art,
poetry, and music to inspire us.
Professor Rai opens the event, speaking of the collaboration of Haku
Shah and Shubha Mudgal:
[It] not only revisits a part of our culture that is deeply rooted in
the values of religious pluralism and harmony, but also revitalizes
these ancient ideas in these troubled times. We believe that a better
knowledge of our deep roots in pluralistic traditions is central to
how we define ourselves as a society today. Diverse symbols . . . con-
stitute the basis from which we conceive of and articulate our vision
of the kind of culture and community that we wish to be. But our
348 Bodies of Song
pluralistic religious roots are often drowned out in the current vio-
lence and misunderstanding . . . around religion. (Rai 2002, 3–4)3
He goes so far as to claim that the voices of popular medieval devotion

prefigure the modern values of “human rights . . . dignity, equality, and
non-discrimination,” and that the poets spoke particularly “to peasants, to
women, and to members of lower castes” (ibid., 4).
But he also issues a warning, which makes me think of the genre that
Kabir singers call chetāvanī, a poem that says “Beware!” In the Kabir world
the chetāvanī poem usually warns of the imminence of death: “Watch
out! Wake up!”4 We could say that Alok Rai is conveying a chetāvanī from
the viewpoint of the political left. Beware of religion! Beware of mysti-
cal music! Don’t let yourself go! Although many distinguished thinkers
have invoked the voices of sants and Sufis in these dark days, there is a
palpable discomfort on the left about getting too entangled with their reli-
giosity. Going hand in hand with the well-known Marxist aversion to reli-
gion is something we could call the fear of bliss. “Bliss” is a strong word;
I mean to include in it the semantic range of joy, delight, beauty, aesthetic
passion, love.
Rai mentions a story about Lenin—actually a story that Gorky told
about Lenin. We will get a full rendition further on, but now we note how
it is embedded in Alok Rai’s message as he introduces Haku Shah’s art and
Shubha Mudgal’s music, both based on sant and Sufi poetry.
Rai warns against the “seduction” of the mystical, articulating carefully
around the dangers of attraction to “transcendent experience.” Referring
to Sahmat’s Anahad Garje concerts soon after the 1992 destruction of the
Babri mosque as well as to tonight’s program,5 he says there was “some
embarrassment on the political left about this seeming surrender to
the idiom of religion. Perhaps there still is—perhaps with . . . good rea-
son. . . .There is [a]‌danger that such beautiful, teasing, mysterious images
and such sudden, insidious music—at once ambush and seduction—is
likely to make one vulnerable. Lenin warned against something similar in
the context of listening to Beethoven’s Appassionata: the world continues to
be a hard, brutal place, despite the music and its evocations of harmony.”
What Rai praises in Kabir and the rest has nothing to do with their devo-
tion to God or their interest in blissful ego dissolution. He identifies—at
least from his words on this occasion—only with their secular and rational
humanism. Referring to a well-known poem, Rai says that Kabir helps
us remember that the world is mad.6 The bhakti tradition “represents an
attempt to induce, to imagine and invent—through metaphysical injection,

through the cultivation of feelings—a gentler, humane society” (ibid., 10).
“Metaphysical injection”—what a strange phrase! Is it a sterilized ver-
sion of bhakti, devotion, the passion for personal transformation, libera-
tion and love?
We begin to sense the depth of the political and intellectual aver-
sion to “transcendence” that Rai refers to. Religious discourse is the
obvious target, but that discourse gets allied with any experience that
breaks through the boundaries of the self and transports the individual
into a space of joyful boundlessness. Music has a particular power to
do that, along with other arts. Indian aesthetic theory over millennia
has linked religious and aesthetic transcendence, said to merge in a
blissful experience of oneness that finds expression in a language of
liquidity—rasa.7
Here is the story of Lenin and Beethoven’s Appassionata, as reported
by Gorky. The context is a tribute on the occasion of Lenin’s death, replete
with descriptive details that present a vibrant human portrait of the revo-
lutionary leader.
Listening to Beethoven’s sonatas played by Isai Dobrowein at the home
of Y. P. Peshkova in Moscow one evening, Lenin remarked:
“I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to

it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes
me proud, perhaps naively so, to think that people can work such
miracles!”
Wrinkling up his eyes, he smiled rather sadly, adding: “But
I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to
say sweet, silly things and pat the heads of people who, living in
a filthy hell, can create such beauty. One can’t pat anyone on the
head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. They ought to be
beaten on the head, beaten mercilessly, although ideally we are
against doing any violence to people. Hm—what a hellishly dif-
ficult job!”8
This is one way of entering our central problem. Political and spiritual
can be painfully—hellishly—opposed to each other. Even while showing
his deep sensitivity to music, Lenin rejects the superhuman (“ethereal”
in the alternate translation given in n. 7) beauty of the Appassionata. He
can’t bear its effect on his nerves. It takes away his aggression. While
350 Bodies of Song
listening, he feels love for his fellow beings. He wants to stroke them
on the head and whisper loving words. But his political self says they
are not to be trusted and should actually be beaten on the head merci-
lessly. Theoretically he and his comrades are against violence, but . . . . His
anger at the filthy hell of a world where people are crushed by poverty and
exploitation explodes not only against the exploiters but also against those
who create beauty in the midst of hell. Gorky, a literary master, captures
the subtlety of the moment in this anecdote, noting that Lenin wrinkles
up his eyes and smiles sadly as he speaks of his own inability to tolerate
the music he adores.
At the Habitat Centre, after invoking Lenin to warn against the ambush
and seduction of mysticism and music, Alok Rai underlines the need to
find “a language in which to talk about cruelty and exploitation, about the
persistence of avoidable suffering . . . [to] signal our commitment to the liv-
ing, to the lives and livelihoods, ever more threatened, of ordinary people”
(Rai 2002, 10–11).
As if one’s ability to be mindful of cruelty and exploitation were
radically incompatible with one’s ability to experience joy listening to
Beethoven or the music of Kabir! I object. Don’t those who engage in
social-political struggle also need joy, love—even transcendence, if that
word refers to the melting of boundaries, the dissolving of fear and hate?
Lacking such vulnerability, do they risk becoming cruel and dry?
An ominous echo of Lenin’s worry turns up in a statement by Golwalkar,
the ideologue of the quasi-military, Hindu nationalist RSS.9 Referring to
the emotional looseness of bhakti, he warns:
All our great authorities on mental discipline have ordained us not

to succumb to overflow of emotions and weep in the name of God
but to apply ourselves to a strict discipline of day-to-day penance.
Effusion of emotions will only shatter the nerves and make the
person weaker than before leaving a moral wreck. (quoted in Bhatt
2001, 143)
Ultimately Alok Rai admits that “worldly rage against exploitation and
injustice” falls short. There are human needs that remain unaddressed by
“the mere removal of deprivations—the arid metaphysics of consumption.
These emotional needs and transcendent yearnings . . . also need to be
addressed by a cultural movement that seeks . . . to involve whole human
beings, and not only parts thereof” (Rai 2002, 11).
But the attitude toward these “emotional needs and transcendent

yearnings” is profoundly ambivalent, to say the least.
Defining Terms: Political, Religious, Spiritual

The definitions of political and spiritual will begin by echoing the dichoto-
mies of outer and inner. “Political” suggests outer-directed concern with
institutions of society and state, conditions of justice and injustice. Political
thought and action, then, are directed toward controlling or changing the
material conditions of people’s lives and the structures of power that gov-
ern them. “Spiritual” suggests inner-directed processes of self-knowledge
and self-transformation. We will continue to raise the question of whether
it is possible to move beyond these polarities, keeping in mind that merely
“dissolving the opposites” is a move that has its own dangers.
If we are going to talk about “spirituality,” we need to consider in
greater detail the relationship and recent divergence of “religion” and
“spirituality.” I will not take up here the genealogies and meanings of the
word “religion” in English and its cognates in European languages, or
their differences from Indian terms that cover similar ground.10 But in
Euro-American academia until very recently, locating Kabir in the domain
of religion would not have raised an eyebrow. We have long classified devo-
tional and mystical literature as “religious.” My specialization in Indian
bhakti poetry got me jobs in departments of religious studies.
In the last few decades, starting in Euro-America and gradually spread-
ing among certain classes in other parts of the world, we have seen a drive
to separate “spirituality” from “religion.” To put the matter crudely, reli-
gion is supposed to be bad, while spirituality is good. The “spiritual but
not religious” trend took off with the rapidly accelerating economic and
cultural globalization of the late twentieth century. “Spiritual” people often
take lore and practices from various cultures and time periods, mixing
and matching to taste. They tend to appear in the higher strata of class
structures, whether in Euro-America or in Anglophone circles in India (as
reflected in the “lifestyle” sections of the Indian English press). In many
(though not all) cases they need leisure and money to pursue their spiri-
tual dreams. A New York Times piece on California’s Esalen Institute con-
veys the flavor:
352 Bodies of Song
At twilight, not far from a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a

Mayan shaman spoke of the return of Kukulkan to dozens of lis-
teners sitting on the floor inside a yurt. . . . Mr. Vergara would soon
lead his listeners in breathing exercises and chants to Kukulkan, as
part of a weeklong workshop mixing yoga and Mayan rituals at the
Esalen Institute, the fabled spiritual retreat. . . . [A]‌s the retreat cen-
ter prepares to observe its 50th anniversary . . . people are still mak-
ing pilgrimages here, drawn by Esalen’s focus on healing, melding
of traditions, and mantra of “spiritual but not religious.” . . . The
recent appointment of a boutique hotel founder to Esalen’s board
of trustees, [critics] say, reflects the increasing emphasis on money-
making packages, which range from $405 for sleeping bag accom-
modations for a weekend workshop to $1,595 for a luxury room.11
I am skeptical about the attempt to divorce religion from spirituality.

Some of the most exquisite artistic testimonies of mystical experience12
and spiritual aspiration have been created by people who were thoroughly
ensconced in institutional religion—people like John of the Cross, Teresa
of Avila, Basavanna (a South Indian rebel against established religion
who established a new religion), Amir Khusrau and other Sufis, and the
Buddhist monk-scholar-poet Shantideva (referenced below). Many icons
of the burgeoning new spirituality are committed to established religious
traditions (for example, Pema Chodron, cited below, and of course the
Dalai Lama). An example recently highlighted by two major Kabir schol-
ars troubles the religious-spiritual separation. David Lorenzen begins his
book Praises to a Formless God with a song by Blind Willie Johnson, a gos-
pel and blues singer from South Carolina who died in 1945 and who is said
to show “an amazing affinity” with Kabir (Lorenzen 1996, 3). Purushottam
Agrawal (2011) enthusiastically endorses the comparison, citing a line by
Willie that says God is not in the pulpit and should be sought outside the
church. Line-by-line, says Agrawal, two songs by Kabir and Willie appear
to be almost translations of each other. But in our enthusiasm about
Willie’s prospiritual/antireligious insight, we should not forget that he
was a churchgoing man and a preacher, who at the time of his death was
operating a House of Prayer in Texas.
“Religious” and “spiritual” are historically and socially intertwined.
Rejecting religion and embracing spirituality is too easy. It oversimplifies
the ways in which religions actually function and perpetuates the alien-
ation of secular intellectuals from the majority of their fellow citizens. But
I accept that there can, within limits, be a distinction and that “spiritual” as
distinct from “religious” may be useful in a discussion of Kabir.13
When the word “spirituality” is preferred to “religion,” we can be sure
that the speaker wishes to focus on the individual and turn away from
the institutional. The traditions of Kabir poetry, whatever their variations
and uncertainties, always emphasize individual awakening, delve into the
intimate depths of individual consciousness, and criticize the abuses and
failures of institutional religion. He is, among other things, a canny psy-
chologist. One could describe Kabir’s concerns as psychospiritual or sim-
ply psychological. The latter could imply, on one level, personal insight,
transformation, relief of suffering; and on another level, a space where
the personal meets a domain of awareness and wisdom that is no longer
merely personal.
Purushottam Agrawal on Religion, Spirituality,

and Kabir
Among recent scholars of Kabir, Purushottam Agrawal is unique in the
scope, creativity, and intellectual power of his writings. Most of his pub-
lications are in Hindi, though a few articles are available in English, and
he is preparing a major book on Kabir in English. Here I will engage with
his discussions of religion and spirituality, and the political implications
of both terms.
In a remarkable collection of short essays published in 2004, Agrawal
explores the intersections of religion, spirituality, politics, secularism,
poetry, and imagination from multiple angles. The book is called Nij
Brahm Vichār: Dharm, Samāj, aur Dharmetar Adhyātma (A Transcendent
Thought of One’s Own: Religion, Society, and Secular Spirituality). Keywords
visible in many essay titles are dharm, dharmsattā, ātma, adhyātma, dharm-
etar adhyādmiktā—religion, religious authority, self, spirit, secular spiri-
tuality. Some essays focus on Kabir and poetry. Some discuss politics and
history. Two take up what the author regards as Marx’s positive under-
standing of spirituality.14 Nearly all are firmly rooted in Indian contexts.
Originally written as a series of columns in the Hindi daily Jansattā, these
essays are daring and profound and will reward thorough reading. Here
I will just give a taste.
At the outset of Nij Brahm Vichār, Agrawal speaks of his lifelong
curiosity about and preoccupation with religion—its powers, its claims,
354 Bodies of Song
and the huge chasm between what is said about it and how we actually
experience it.
They say that God is one and all the religions are just different roads
to reach the one God. Then why are the roads full of crashes? Why
do the travelers keep having such atrocious fights? They say that
religion never teaches us to be enemies. Then why, when we look
at history or glance at what’s going on around us, does it seem that
religion teaches us only to be enemies? They say that all religions
teach love and compassion. Then how do so many religious follow-
ers get initiated into hatred? (Agrawal 2004, 9)
Another set of coexisting but contradictory facts leads Agrawal toward

a definition of spirituality.
When it comes to self-preservation, human beings have an aggres-

sive instinct. At the same time, sympathy for the pain of others and
some conception of justice are also human instincts. Humans are
wrapped up in themselves yet always ready to expand themselves.
When Rousseau imagined a “social contract,” his basic premise was
that human beings have at once a drive for self-preservation and a
natural kindness. Let us recall the remarkable image of Harishankar
Parsai-ji: “Humans occupy no fixed location. Who can say when a
person will become a hyena or an embodiment of compassion?”
To settle these opposing possibilities, we seek a way to compose
a meaningful whole. Between the hyena and the avatar of compas-
sion, could there be some harmony that would give meaning to an
ordinary person’s life? Even more, that would provide coherence
to centuries and millennia of memories, and to our visions of the
future? That would provide some ground for seeing our personal
struggles as united with those of the world? The search for this
ground is the spiritual search. It is a search for the expansion of the
self, the possibility of going beyond the self. (ibid., 48)
One especially beautiful essay is inspired by the late Hindi writer

Bhisham Sahni to whom Agrawal pays homage in the essay Jigyāsu
manuṣhya kā chhoṭā-sā nijī dharm (“For the Human Seeker, a Small
Personal Religion”). Agrawal comes close to the heart of what spirituality
means to him when he speaks in this essay of the “thrilling realization
of the connectedness of all existence” (2004, 34). The word I translate

as thrilling (romānchak), reflecting traditions of both aesthetic and reli-
gious thought in India, literally means causing the body’s hair to stand
on end. Such a realization may come spontaneously. Often a certain
discipline is involved. Religious traditions have developed practices that
cultivate concentration, self-awareness, devotion, and reduction of the
mental and physical conditioning that keeps us locked in our habits,
attachments, fear, and grasping. An overall term for such practices in
India is sādhanā. In his 2009 book on Kabir, Akath kahānī prem kī,
Agrawal has combined and expanded several of the earlier essays to
form a long chapter entitled Kabīr ki sādhanā, which I would translate
as “Kabir’s spiritual practice,” but which Agrawal has rendered in an
English version as “Kabir’s pursuit”—perhaps to keep it as secular and
neutral as possible.
In a lecture in 2009, Agrawal expanded on the meaning of adhyātma,
the Hindi/Sanskrit word that we render as “spirituality”:
Kabir’s criticism of Hinduism or Islam, other religious traditions

like the Nath Panth, and in an indirect way even the Buddhist and
Jain traditions, to my mind actually reflects a search for a funda-
mental connection with the cosmos . . . without the mediation of
organized religion . . . spirituality without religion. Let me add that
spirituality is an extremely inadequate translation of adhyātma.
Adhyātma in Indian tradition does not mean things pertaining to
the other world. It certainly does not mean the spirits with whom
you could talk with the help of a priest; it does not mean that at
all in the Indian tradition. Adhyātma etymologically means to go
beyond yourself. In the eighth chapter of the Gītā, the question
is put to Lord Krishna: please tell me, what is adhyātma, what is
brahma? The answer is a quintessential understanding of the
entire Indian tradition. The Gītā makes Krishna say: swabhāvo
adhyātmo muchayate—your very nature is known as adhyātma.
(Agrawal 2009c)
Agrawal is eloquent and brilliant in exploring the meaning of spiritual-

ity and differentiating it from religion. He strikes tellingly at the ways in
which organized religion becomes invested in power and dogma, offering
security, purity, hierarchical authority, and profit motives while draining
agency, consciousness, personal responsibility, and equality. In a creative
356 Bodies of Song
application of Marxism, he argues that religion brings about alienation

from one’s own spirituality, just as capitalism brings about alienation from
one’s own labor.15 But to my mind he goes too far in setting up religion
as the nemesis and destroyer of spirituality. In this analysis, spirituality
is good—more than that, it is the essence of the human species (prajāti
sār) (2004, 25); and religion is bad—more than that, it is diabolical. By
repeatedly invoking the parable of the Faustian pact, Agrawal suggests that
when naturally spiritual human beings cave in to the promises and entice-
ments of religious power, they are making a deal with the devil that they
can never take back!16 This view seriously oversimplifies religion and its
intricate connections with spirituality.
Agrawal later seems to soften this sharply dichotomizing critique, turn-
ing binary opposition into dialectic—but only after elaborating at greater
length on the dark side of religion:
I am not suggesting that religion is nothing more than this [the

dark side of the Faustian pact]. On the contrary, I insist that reli-
gion should be understood in its dialectical totality. It is essential
that religion be seen as a composite of spirituality, a faith-system,
a code of behavior, ethics, and social identity. Religious imagi-
nation is much more than violence, vengeance, and obsession
with purity of blood. It also has something very sacred, sub-
lime, and auspicious. Not only the lives of illustrious figures
like Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, and
Raman Maharshi, but also the lives of millions of ordinary pious
people bear witness to this fact. I am not proposing a religious
war against religion; I am insisting that religion and its role be
understood dialectically. One needs to distinguish between reli-
gious viewpoints that accord importance to religion’s spiritual
aspect and those that turn it into the image of an unassailable
power structure. One needs to choose one’s side in the incessant
conflict that goes on between these two trends. Comprehending
the role of the spiritual impulse in the constitution of religion,
one needs to ask the question: Is it possible to conceive of spiri-
tuality outside the domain of religion? Kabir’s practice provides
an unambiguous and thrilling answer. Yes, it is indeed possible.
(Agrawal 2009a, 329–30)
A Working Definition of Spirituality

The definition I use in the rest of this chapter has much in common with
Purushottam Agrawal’s, but it doesn’t rely on the broad rejection of reli-
gion that occupies most of his writing about Kabir’s sādhanā. I use the
word “spirituality” to refer to (1) an inner-directed process of cultivating
self-knowledge and alleviating suffering; and (2) an impulse to break free
from the narrow bounds of self-centered individuality, to know one’s con-
nection to all living beings, to nature, to matter and energy. Thus it is both
highly individualistic and oriented toward a loosening of the boundaries of
the individual self. This nexus has interesting implications for the spiritual/
political question.
Experiencing our connection to the whole living and nonliving uni-
verse does not mean that we forget our everyday identity or lose the ability
to brush our teeth or get to work on time. But a spiritual aspirant is drawn
to the possibility that the boundaries of the narrowly conceived self may
grow thin and dissolve. This kind of experience has been ardently desired
by human beings in many times and places. It may be conceptualized in
various ways. Commonly it is understood religiously: that reality which is
revealed when the ego-self dissolves is called God, or the impersonal yet
vibrant and all-pervading Brahman, or Buddha-nature. Yet it need not be
religiously conceived. In artistic creation the ego-self may become “lost” in
this way, no longer controlling and fearful and limited, but deeply concen-
trated, open, and connected to a fantastically larger flow of reality. When
a listener/viewer/reader takes in an artistic creation, the same thing may
happen. Intense love between human beings is valued as it opens an ave-
nue to this kind of experience. Sex can also be a gateway. This little catalog
is far from exhaustive.
The desire to lose ourselves in something larger can also be sinister. It
can lead us to identify with aggressive nationalism, militarism, authoritar-
ian organizations, cruelly repressive religions, sick cults. But this caveat
does not discredit spiritual aspiration. It just underlines the truth con-
veyed by the razor-edge metaphor in the Kathā Upaṇiṣhad: “Sharp like a
razor’s edge is the path, the sages say, difficult to traverse.” We need to
keep examining our fundamental values, our habitual patterns and blind
spots, the strong pull of dishonesty, in order to avoid falling off that edge
into one or another dark delusion.17
Pema Chodron, a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, explains
bodhicitta, the aspiration to awaken:
358 Bodies of Song
[Bodhicitta] lifts us out of self-centeredness . . . it fulfills our wish to

lessen the pain of self-absorption and our wish to benefit others. . . .
Shantideva explains that our intention to free all beings from suffer-
ing can become irreversible, bringing benefit equal to the vastness
of the sky. This happens when we no longer question the wisdom
of thinking of others; we truly know this to be the source of inde-
structible happiness. Something shifts at the core of our being. . . .
This is the happiness of egolessness. It’s the joy of realizing there’s
no prison; there are only very strong habits, and no sane reason for
strengthening them further. In essence these habits are insubstan-
tial. Moreover, there is no solid self-identity or separateness. We’ve
invented it all. (Chodron 2005, 7–14)
This is one way to describe what’s at the core of what I call the spiri-
tual path: to be lifted out of self-centeredness, to lessen the pain of
self-absorption (having recognized that it is painful), and to act for the bene-
fit of others—realizing that dissolving the painful core of self-centeredness,
and acting out of an open heart for the benefit of all, are actually one and
the same thing. Is it clear how this spiritual process can merge, for some
people, with social and political commitment? Aspiring to act for the ben-
efit of all, relatively free from the prison of greed and self-obsessed fear, we
may find it natural, even inevitable, to engage with movements to liberate
the grievously oppressed, to transform structures that perpetuate depriva-
tion and violence, to stop the destruction of the earth.
The eighth-century Buddhist poet Shantideva is a source of inspiration
for those who believe that devotion to individual spiritual liberation and
devotion to relieving suffering in the social-political world are united at the
root. Take, for example, this stanza:
All the violence, fear and suffering

That exists in this world
Comes from grasping at self.
What is the use of this great monster for you?
If you do not let the self go,
There will be no end to suffering.
Just as, if you do not release a flame from your hand,
You can’t stop it from burning your hand.18
The world is in the throes of tremendous suffering from preventable

causes—poverty, inequality, hunger, prejudice, exploitation, disease, vio-
lence, war. Individual and collective action to alleviate the suffering of oth-
ers issues naturally as compassionate and intelligent people respond to
these circumstances. But many have perceived that outer-directed activ-
ism is only half the story. These problems are created in the first place
by people who are driven by greed, fear, hate. Fires burning inside us
cause us to ignite fires outside. Revolutionaries who fight to topple mur-
derous, exploitative regimes often build new regimes that are murderous
and exploitative. Inner and outer transformation depend on each other.
Shantideva states this proposition convincingly. A Kabir dohā uses similar
imagery:
I! I! A terrible thing.
Run from it if you can.
Friend, how long will you keep
fire wrapped in cotton?
But the relation between transforming the self and helping oth-
ers isn’t just a happy osmosis. There is tension—sometimes
irreconcilable—between them. To truly investigate and transform the self
has often seemed to imply renunciation of the world. And to understand
and transform the world has often seemed to require a rejection of both
institutional and introverted forms of religion. In some instances the
problem is ontological, arising from a dualistic split between “material”
and “spiritual,” and the need to affirm one while denying the other. The
problem is also practical: someone striving in either of these two fields
often finds that she doesn’t have time for the other, that the other entan-
gles her and diverts her from her essential work. The other is dangerous.
In a dualistic framework, the other may be evil.
Making Lenin Listen to Beethoven

In the historical unfolding of revolutionary politics, the subtlety seen in
Gorky’s portrayal of Lenin is usually lost. Rigid adherence to ideology may
suck dry the springs of compassion and creativity. Materialism, perhaps
conceived in the compassionate impulse to attend to the basic needs of
all people, may lead to aridity and dehumanization. Artists, writers, and
360 Bodies of Song
intellectuals, projected as enemies of the state, may be suppressed, impris-

oned, tortured, killed. The generic human drive for power, parading in the
guise of devotion to ideology and the state, corrupts sincere efforts to cre-
ate a new order. Such developments have been seen in twentieth-century
communist states such as the USSR, China, and Cambodia. This sort
of thing happens in totalitarianism of the right as well. It also happens,
in less spectacular and more insidious ways, in imperfect democracies
throughout the world, prominently including the United States.
For German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the story
about Lenin and the Appassionata became the inspiration for a film about
East Germany—The Lives of Others, released in 2006.19 Von Donnersmarck
saw in the East German state the systematic stifling of artistic creativity,
social trust, love, and compassion in the name of a sterile and ever more
ruthless ideology, coupled with the usual corruption and lust of men (and
occasionally women) in power. The central character is Captain Gerd
Wiesler, a successful officer in the Stasi or secret police. He lives alone. We
get a glimpse of the barely conscious ache of lovelessness in his life when
he begs a prostitute who visits his apartment for a brief transaction to stay
a little longer. She refuses. In the course of duty, Wiesler bugs the home
of a leading theater director on whom a corrupt official is trying to pin evi-
dence of disloyalty to the state. Wearing huge earphones, Wiesler listens
for many hours to the lives of the playwright and his artist friends. He
becomes privy to their discussions of literature, their playfulness and sor-
row. He listens to the words of love and the sounds of lovemaking between
the playwright and his actress girlfriend. He hears beautiful music. He
hears Beethoven. And he undergoes a transformation.
Von Donnersmarck explains the genesis of his film in an interview:
Lenin had few close personal friends and one of his closest friends . . .
was Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer. . . . After Lenin’s death Gorky
wrote that Lenin had once told him . . . something like this. . . . The
Appassionata is my favorite piece of music, Lenin says, but I don’t want
to listen to it anymore, because . . . when I listen to it, it makes me want
to stroke people’s heads and tell them nice stupid things. But I have to
smash those heads, bash them in without mercy in order to finish my
revolution. . . . I thought, so this is what Lenin feels like. Now let’s see if
we can find a way to force Lenin to listen to the Appassionata. Out of that
I constructed this idea of a man just sitting there with earphones on his
head, expecting that through these earphones he’s going to hear words
of his ideological enemies. But actually he’s hearing music that is so

beautiful that it . . . makes him rethink that ideology. . . . Lenin changed
into a Stasi officer who’s sitting in a surveillance center monitoring
people. . . . Who would be playing that kind of beautiful music if not
artists? . . . That was going to be the basic setting: a Stasi officer moni-
toring artists and changing through that close proximity with them.20
At the beginning of the film the Stasi officer and the state he serves rep-
resent the worst possible outcome of “Lenin’s choice” between music and
political orthodoxy. At the end the officer—catalyzed by listening with
those big earphones, by exposure to art and love and to the lies and cruelty
of the political system—has made another choice.
No Separation
To represent the view that the political and spiritual cannot and should
not be separated in Kabir, I call on two of the most eloquent and passion-
ate scholars of Kabir whom I met in my journeys—both city men with
PhD degrees in literature, both preferring to do their public speaking and
writing more in Hindi than in English: Purushottam Agrawal and Kapil
Tiwari.
Agrawal shares the leftist antipathy to organized religion but refuses
to surgically remove Kabir’s spiritual expressions while embracing his
humanism and social-political commentary. Both as a reader of poetry
and as an observer of human experience, Agrawal will not disown Kabir’s
“transcendent yearnings”:
Again and again Kabir’s poetry reminds us: between worldly and
transcendent, inner and outer, social and spiritual, there is no oppo-
sition. To understand this non-opposition, there is no need to search
“outside.” If there is any way to get free of the incompleteness that
haunts us, to be released from the habit of chopping our fullness
into pieces, it will be through realization “within the body” [ghaṭ
bhītar] of our human essence: “Search and you’ll find it instantly,
in a split second. / Kabir says, listen seeker: it’s the breath of your
breath.” (Agrawal 2009a, 36)
362 Bodies of Song
Agrawal finds inner and outer not only not-opposed to each other in
Kabir but also mutually dependent, each impossible without the other. He
cites Kabir’s phrase bāhar bhītar sabad nirantar—“the word [that resonates]
endlessly inside and outside.”
To listen to the unbroken continuity of worldly and transcendent,

outer and inner, social and spiritual, to listen constantly to the word
resounding endlessly inside and outside and to live in accordance
with their interdependence—this is what Kabir calls ghaṭ sādhanā,
spiritual practice in the body. . . . His much-cited and much-praised
social consciousness and social criticism develop from his spiritual
search. Kabir’s ghaṭ sādhanā throws his revolutionary enthusiasts
into great embarrassment; but without it, his social consciousness
and criticism are impossible. When Kabir looks at society, he sees
it through the eyes of that dream which is revealed to him by ghaṭ
sādhanā. (Agrawal 2009a, 37)
Addressing an audience at a Kabir festival in Bangalore in 2009, he speaks

more personally:
If you look at the poetry, it will be very, very difficult—to my

mind impossible—to make a distinction between a spiritual and
political Kabir. . . . When I say the word “spiritual,” please first
translate that in your mind to Hindi, Sanskrit, Kannada, what-
ever, into adhyātmik. Don’t take it in the sense in which it is used
in contemporary English.21 In my way of approaching Kabir, you
cannot really make a distinction between spiritual and political,
between universal and specific. You can be conscious of the spe-
cific manifestations of the universal. You can be conscious of
political moments. But you cannot say, as many of my friends
insist—look here, we are interested in Kabir only so far as he
is critical of Hindu bigotry or Muslim bigotry or of caste order
or of Brahminism or of Brahmin supremacy, and all that. The
rest of Kabir we are not concerned with. Of course you can do
that. I mean, nobody can stop you from doing that, but I think
you would be doing an injustice to the poetic praxis of Kabir. . . .
A certain component [of Kabir] is attractive to us because we are
beset with some problems in which we find Kabir can be used
as an associate or as a tool. Let me repeat I have nothing against

that. My only point is this: please do not reduce Kabir only to a
social reformer or only to a prop in our political activity. Kabir is,
and many poets for that matter are, much bigger and much more
complex than that. (Agrawal 2009c)
We met Kapil Tiwari at length in c hapter 3. For many years the direc-
tor of the Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad (Institute for Folk and Tribal Arts)
in Bhopal, he is a passionate advocate of the arts cultivated by ordinary
people, and he has an intense personal connection with Kabir. The follow-
ing is part of an interview conducted and filmed by Shabnam Virmani in
2004. Tiwari firmly resists the attempt to separate political and spiritual/
religious (he does not distinguish between the latter two terms) in Kabir.
Shabnam Virmani (SV): Do people from different positions in society

selectively appropriate Kabir based on their own aims?
Kapil Tiwari (KT): Absolutely, people make use of Kabir to fulfill their
own agendas. This has nothing really to do with Kabir himself.
Revolutionaries find certain parts of Kabir useful, right? When he’s
attacking the pandit or criticizing the mullah, right? Their agenda is
fulfilled with such poetry, it confirms their ideology. This aspect of
Kabir’s poetry and its truth serves their agenda very well.
But this is not the point of Kabir’s criticism. He insists that if there
is such a thing as religion [dharma], it lies within. All the various
forms of external religion are not to be trusted, not authentic. They
lead people astray. This is why Kabir criticizes temple and mosque,
pandit and mullah. When social movements pick and choose among
Kabir’s words for their own purposes, surprisingly they resist Kabir’s
spirituality, Kabir’s truth, Kabir’s transcendent experience. They don’t
trust those words of Kabir. It’s a strange irony. The part of Kabir that
seems poetically interesting and important to them is where he sharply
criticizes gross religion and its profiteers. That is useful for them. But
when Kabir says, “I am listening to the boundless unstruck sound,”
they get uncomfortable. They don’t even want to mention this Kabir.
I am speaking to you of an integral Kabir, a Kabir we can know in his
wholeness, including both his social criticism and his spirituality.
SV: And these are two aspects of one reality. They are totally connected.
364 Bodies of Song
KT: They are joined together! They cannot be separated, because whoever
enters into true religion will simply have to criticize those kinds of peo-
ple who, with no experience of their own, just set up their business in
the market of religion. They use the gods, they use holy books, they use
mantras, they use worship and ritual. They turn religion into a lie, they
cut religion off from the truth.
SV: And it’s fundamentally hypocritical—the same religion that
declares that the supreme being exists in everyone then propagates
the caste system, calls people sweepers and untouchables, and
persecutes them.
KT: Shabnam, I would say it in these words—that from time immemorial
in various religions, it is only such people who have held sway: the ones
for whom religion is a livelihood, a job, not a thirst, not a search. So
once every few centuries when a man like Kabir is born, he has to take
on these people. Tulsi had to collide with them, Mira had to collide with
them, and Kabir had to collide with them. After a genuine spiritual
experience, social poetry criticizing such people is not only possible, it
is inevitable. But the point of that social poetry, its core, is that it arises
from the ground of spirituality in order to safeguard spiritual truth. It’s
not just a frivolous criticism of somebody. It’s an attack on the politics
of religion, not religion itself.
SV: On one hand revolutionaries have selectively appropriated Kabir. On
the other hand, upper-caste Brahminical Hinduism has incorporated
him into its fold. Would you agree with this?
KT: To a great extent it is true. The point is that priest-dominated reli-
gious shops cannot run for too long without a true experience or
a truly spiritual person. Tulsi was persecuted [by the Brahmins] in
Kashi. Today it’s a fact that 80% of the religious shops run because
of Tulsi.
A person like Kabir is born only rarely, maybe once in many centu-
ries. When he’s alive, Brahmins, pandits, and big scholars of scripture
attack him brutally. As soon as he’s gone, they want to use Kabir to
make their shops credible. They know that Kabir’s existence was a very
rare thing, and it can be used to lend credibility to their religion, their
version of truth, their temples and sects. It’s quite amazing how, when
Kabir was alive, the priest-dominated society couldn’t tolerate him. Yet
for centuries afterward, they keep peddling their merchandise in the
name of his truth. The fact is that both sides have misused Kabir. Social
activists used Kabir for their own ends, and the same is true for those
on the spiritual side, who quote and cite Kabir not so that the truth of
Kabir may spread, but to gain legitimacy for themselves.22
Taking Lenin Seriously

We can say that there’s no problem between inner and outer, that they are
wedded to each other. We can argue this convincingly, based on texts by
Kabir and others, and on our own intuition. But there is a problem. “Inner
work” can eclipse social reality. It is a high, a way of getting drunk (think
of all the songs about naśhā, drunken joy). Who wants to attend to the ugly,
messy, intransigent world when a crystalline radiance is expanding within
us, making us indescribably happy?
The lord gave me a marijuana drink, what a potion he gave me to

drink!
Redness rises in my eyes, the guru gave me a drink.
I drank from the cup and went mad, staggered around like a drunkard.
The locks of a thousand lifetimes sprang open,
my body was filled with light. Redness rises in my eyes.. . . .
In every bush and tree, everything living and unmoving, my lord is

blooming.
Wherever I look, no space is empty. Wherever I look, no place is void.
Every body is utterly filled. Redness rises in my eyes.23
Spiritual seekers often turn away from the world in order to get inner
freedom. Their quest calls on them to let go, to give up entanglements.
They need a quiet place to practice. As Lenin noticed, a taste of that tran-
scendent beauty and joy can take away your will to fight. Spiritual insight
undermines the oppositional sense of self and other. No one appears to be
your enemy. A profound acceptance creeps through your cells.

One drop fills a thirsty person’s vessel. You can’t even dream
of that taste! How to explain this, and to whom?
One drop, and you’re home.24
366 Bodies of Song
The “spiritual” call draws us to enter a state of deep concentration,

one-pointedness, no longer painfully fragmented. In these states, the distrac-
tion and turmoil of the world recede. We may deliberately turn away from the
turmoil, shut it out. Nothing must be allowed to interrupt this incalculably
valuable experience for which our whole being longs. One of the limbs of
classical eight-limb yoga is pratyāhāra, closing the doors of the senses.
Monks and yogis go into isolation and radically simplify their needs
to attain this. Their withdrawal from society is evidence of the tension
between the complications of social engagement and the need to create
special circumstances for attaining deep states of consciousness. World
renunciation and asceticism have strong histories in Hinduism, Buddhism,
and Jainism, India’s three ancient and still flourishing religions. In ancient
India people argued, sometimes vehemently, about the competing calls of
spiritual and social commitment. Patrick Olivelle has assembled a won-
derful set of passages from Hindu and Buddhist sources under the title
“Ascetic Withdrawal or Social Engagement” (Lopez 1995, 533ff.). Some texts
urge total withdrawal from the world in the interests of spiritual attainment
while others predict gruesome karmic consequences for those who do not
fulfill their social responsibilities. Over the last two millennia, Indian think-
ers have sought ways to harmonize renunciation with social engagement
despite their apparent incompatibility. The Gītā’s karma yoga, the Dharma
Shastras’ four stages of life, the Sikhs’ insistence on householder life and
refusal to have an ascetic branch, and the location of many bhakti saints
among common working people are famous examples. But these examples
are as much evidence of the extreme tension as they are resolutions of it.
D. R. Nagaraj comments insightfully on why social criticism by pre-
modern yogis and mystics does not necessarily translate into fuel for
twentieth-century social justice activists:
[A]‌whole range of indigenous yogis and sadhus, for whom colo-

nialism hardly mattered either as a transitory phase or as a force
to be resisted, had tried to deny, quite forcefully, the centrality of
caste hierarchy in the scheme of things. In this regard, Shishunala
Sheriff and Kaivara Narayanappa, the two yogis of Karnataka, and
the Satnamis and the Mahima movement of North India come to
mind immediately. Apparently, the chief reason for their inabil-
ity to influence historical events in any significant way was that
they did not either see or present the problem (untouchability,
in this instance) as a political one, which was necessary for the
regeneration of Indian society as a whole. To be precise, they did not

see their society as part of a nation-state. For these indigenous radi-
cals, the task of fighting the caste system had been one of the spiri-
tual requirements of their tradition . . . They were the conscience
of smaller communities. . . . their tradition had always treated tem-
poral power as something alien, on which very little or no positive
influence could be exerted” (Nagaraj 2011, 24–25).
Once I asked a Dalit activist in India whether those who had followed
Ambedkar in converting to Buddhism showed much interest in medita-
tion. He said that some groups were practicing meditation, but others
resisted it, saying, “They’re trying to take away our anger!” Dalit scholar
Harish Wankhede, whom I came to know at Stanford University, put the
point more sharply in a Facebook post on Dec. 20, 2014:
Spirituality is the fodder of self-engrossed individuals. It only closes

our eyes not to see the everyday vices and crimes organized by the
religious mafia. Similarly, peace is . . . rhetoric in democracy that
disallows us to take radical moves against the brutal and corrupt
political regimes. Sermons for spirituality and peace are the power-
ful tools of the ruling elites to curtail our revolutionary aspirations
and to keep us mere recipients of doles given by never-existent God
and corrupt political leadership. Only a critical rejection of such sov-
ereign ideas may bring any good to the worsening society and polity.
Kancha Ilaiah, whose book Why I Am Not a Hindu argues for the his-
torical and cultural distinctness of Dalit-Bahujans from Hindus, overturns
the spiritual meaning commonly associated with a famous verse from the
Bhagavad-gītā: “You are entitled to action [or work] but not to the fruits of
action [or work]” (Gītā 2.47). 25 This verse is fundamental to the teaching of
niṣhkāma karma—performing one’s ethical duty, or appropriate action, free
of narrow attachment to the desired results. I have always seen niṣhkāma
karma as a profoundly valuable teaching. Ilaiah begs to differ. He points
out that Dalit-Bahujans are closely identified with and give positive value
to physical labor, unlike advocates of Brahminical orthodoxy, who regard
such labor as polluting and beneath them. How useful it is, then, for the
upper castes, identified with their own “purity,” to instruct their classes of
servants and despised outcasts that they have a right and duty to perform
work, but no right to enjoy or possess the fruits of their work.
368 Bodies of Song
At a Kabir Panth gathering, I heard a guru speak to a group of devo-

tees about how to concentrate on reciting the divine name. He said, “If
outside they are shooting guns, let them shoot. Your work is to be totally
immersed in the name. Lose yourself in the name.” I was horrified, as this
was soon after the 2002 communal massacres in Gujarat. I deeply disap-
proved of the idea that pursuing personal bliss was a good reason to ignore
the suffering and violence close at hand—especially when the violence was
perpetrated in the name of religion.
Lenin (along with others in Marxian traditions) is deeply wary of any
call to a private ecstasy that blurs the analytical intelligence and under-
mines the will to carry on class struggle amid concrete political-economic
realities. He warns us not only against spirituality but against music!
Yet his sad smile and expressive wrinkling of the eyes, as described by
Gorky, show that he was sensitive to the “hellishly difficult” nature of
the task.
Religious Folk Music and Politics:

An American Case
In March 2007, Bernice Johnson Reagon came to Stanford University.
Musician, activist, and scholar, Reagon was deeply involved in the
American civil rights movement; was founder-director of “Sweet Honey in
the Rock,” a popular women’s a cappella ensemble specializing in music
related to the black heritage, with which she performed from 1973 to 2004;
and is author of many books and articles. I attended her Stanford presenta-
tion, called “Song Culture of the Civil Rights Movement.” It was an amal-
gam of history, images, audio tracks, and live performance.
Throughout the program I was thinking about Lenin’s problem with
the Appassionata and Indian leftist/secularist reservations about the sants
and Sufis. They might love the music, yet they found it dangerous and felt
they had to shut it down at a certain point. For most African American
participants, the civil rights movement was steeped in the life of the black
church. Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister whose Christian faith
was inseparable from his other commitments. They did not feel that they
needed to shut down either the religious or the musical and emotional ele-
ments of their culture for the sake of the struggle.
At the end of her presentation, when Reagon invited questions, I raised
my hand. “Some people think that passionate, joyful music, especially
combined with religious sentiment, is bad for revolutionary movements.

Lenin said something about this. There was a fear that it would lead to
escapism, excessive indulgence in emotion, forgetting about the world.
Do you think there’s a danger that this kind of music can wreck your
political edge?”
Reagon stood like a tree in the middle of the stage and looked straight
at me. “We felt what we were doing was related to something much greater
than us. The music was a direct line to that. When we sang together, we
were tapping into an infinite source of power that was running through
us. It gave us courage, joy, unity, and the strength to carry on.” When
someone else asked a related question, she stood still for a moment, then
started to sing “Kumbaya,” quietly at first. Audience members joined in.
Many of us had been part of that era. Gradually people began standing up,
swaying, linking arms in the familiar chorus. Reagon sang the verses in
a crescendo of energy, improvising on the closing syllables, her rich and
colorful voice ranging up and down the scales in unexpected melodies,
carrying us along till we joined with ever more enthusiasm on the chorus.
Thus, instead of discussing the power of song theoretically, she made us
experience it.26
For those of us who had sung those songs during the civil rights
period and in later movements for peace and justice, the singing struck
immediately at our hearts, cutting away distraction and fear, reminding
us of the best things we ever did, the most selfless moments we ever
had, the best access to the kind of love that King called agape love and
that Gandhi said was another word for ahimsa. King had observed, “The
freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle. They
give the people a new courage and a sense of unity. . . . They keep alive a
faith, a radiant hope in the future, particularly in our most trying hours”
(W. Martin 2005, 48).
Negro spirituals have a lot in common with bhajans. These devotional
songs, composed by African Americans who embraced Christianity, go
back to slavery times and continue to be popular today. Using stories from
the Bible, expressing deep personal feeling, evoking intense relationships
with persons on earth or in heaven, praying or dreaming of better times
to come, they speak simultaneously of religious faith and human expe-
rience. They run the gamut of all possible emotions, expressing sorrow,
jubilation, weariness, despair, awe, fear, hope, love, visions of liberation,
and determination to fight. They do all this with poetic imagination and
musical genius. It is folk music, without the complexity and refinement of
370 Bodies of Song
classical musics that require years of training. But like the Kabir music of
Malwa and Rajasthan, it is brilliant and compelling.
Scholars have discussed the social and psychological implications of
Negro spirituals, just as we have been doing with Kabir bhajans. Did songs
of faith and dreams of heaven foster passivity and resignation to their abys-
mal existence as slaves? Did the emotional expression and physical release
of their singing sessions serve as a safety valve, providing temporary plea-
sure and relief but robbing them of their will to resist or to analyze the
material roots of their oppression?
Almost unanimously, scholars have affirmed that from the earli-
est times, the spirituals reflected a double consciousness: on one hand
an intense religious faith articulated in the idiom of an Africanized
Christianity; on the other hand, a recognition that the stories of Israelites
escaping from slavery, of heroic individuals delivered from torture and
murder, of heavenly places where everyone would have shoes, were also
about this world and their aspirations for freedom in it.
When Israel was in Egypt’s land

let my people go.
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
let my people go.
Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land,
Tell ol’ Pharaoh
let my people go.
***
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel,

Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, then why not every man?
He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den,
Jonah from the belly of the whale,
He delivered the children from the fiery furnace,
then why not every man?
***
I got shoes, you got shoes,

all God’s children got shoes.
When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes,
gonna walk all over God’s heaven, heaven, heaven.
Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t goin’ there, heaven, heaven,

gonna walk all over God’s heaven.
***
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus!

Steal away, steal away home,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
In the nineteenth century, as slave insurrections and escapes mounted,

the conscious use of spirituals as code for resistance increased. Clearly,
enslaved Africans employed spirituals and other folksongs as secret coded
communications, announcing plans for escape, revolt and clandestine
meetings, or cheering on comrades in battle.
An example of a song composed for one purpose, but used secretly
for other, masked purposes, is the familiar spiritual “Wade in the
Water.” This song was created to accompany the rite of baptism, but
Harriet Tubman used it to communicate to fugitives escaping to the
North that they should be sure to “wade in the water” in order to throw
bloodhounds off their track. An improvised version of this song when it
was used for this purpose was:
Jordan’s water is chilly and cold,

God’s gonna trouble the water;
It chills the body but not the soul,
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water;

Wade in the water children.
Wade in the water;
God’s gonna trouble the water.
If you get there before I do,

God’s gonna trouble the water,
Tell all my friends I’m comin’ too.
Tubman’s and others’ improvisations on already existing spiritu-

als, employing them clandestinely in the multilayered struggle
for freedom, were repeated at many times and places. (Jones
2005, 50, 54)
372 Bodies of Song
We must emphasize that, with this rising political consciousness, the

meaning of the songs did not change from spiritual to political. It was
always, and would always remain, both.
[Harding] has shown us, convincingly, that the signs of active strug-
gle were present from the onset of African captivity, flowing like a
river toward the ultimate, certain goal of complete freedom and jus-
tice. . . . At the same time they retained complete faith in the endorse-
ment and guidance of spiritual forces larger than themselves. In
their African-derived frame of reference, there was no contradiction
between this absolute faith in the divine and the concomitant assump-
tion of responsibility for personal and collective action. (ibid., 44)
At one point in the splendid book that I have been citing, Arthur Jones
imagines a gathering of present-day African Americans with their ances-
tors from both America and Africa.
We are now aware of the collective voice of the ancestors, singing to

each of us in the sound chambers of our individual spirits. As we
begin to hear the melodies and words of the songs within us, we
find ourselves preparing to join in the singing, gesturing to our chil-
dren . . . we begin singing. Our sound grows in intensity and we are
now one large chorus, chanting in multiple rhythms and harmo-
nies: “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child . . . I’m troubled in
mind . . . Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The sound
of our music continues to expand, finally filling the room; we are
shouting! We sing one song after another; we feel our individual
spirits intermingling. It is a chilling, ecstatic experience. (ibid., 39)
No fear of bliss here!

In the 1950s and 1960s, use of spirituals in the political arena took
another step. “During the Civil Rights Movements our freedom songs no
longer operated in code,” writes Bernice Johnson Reagon (2001, 3). They
tinkered with the words of old songs (as is common in folk traditions), con-
tinuing to play on the ambiguity of the inner and outer meanings of peace,
freedom, liberation, devotion, and struggle. People rallying, marching, going
to jail, risking their lives on “freedom rides” that challenged segregation on
Greyhound buses, sang songs full of spirit. For many people the songs were
still God-centered, associated with church and with the history of enslaved
ancestors, but that did not detract from their power in this world. For those
who were not religious, the songs were still powerful and stirring.
As an example of conscious alteration, Reagon discusses the song that
gives her book its title, “If You Don’t Go, Don’t You Hinder Me.” In the
line, “I’m on my way to Canaan land,” they changed “Canaan” to “free-
dom.” This made it nonsectarian and clearly applicable to the present
struggle. But she also explains sympathetically what Canaan meant in
the stories and sermons of the black Baptist churches she attended in her
childhood:
[It] was about a life beyond this experience we were having on earth.
. . . an “over yonder,” an “up yonder,” an afterlife—“across our Jordan
River,” on “the other side of death.” Those stories and sermons held
those songs for us until we began to fight against racism in this
country and then the same songs, old songs, became new—lining
up for use in the struggle, change a word here or there and there
you have it—a freedom song, a new instrument for the struggle for
freedom. (Reagon 2001, 4–5)
This Canaan, this “over Jordan” about which we hear, for example, in the
beautiful spiritual “Deep River,” was a land where everyone would be clean,
happy, and free: “When I get to heaven, gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk
all over God’s heaven.” It was a land where degradation and deprivation
were lifted, and where enslaved people who had been sold away from their
family members would be reunited: “Soon I will be done with the troubles
of the world, troubles of the world, troubles of the world, Soon I will be
done with the troubles of the world, I’m going to live with God. No more
weeping and a-wailing . . . I’m going to meet my mother . . . father . . . sister
. . . brother.”
We may be reminded of Satlok for the Kabir Panthis, Begumpura for
the followers of Raidas, the amar deśh or deśh divānā (country of no-death or
of divine madness) in Kabir’s songs.27 We may hear the resonance between
a black American song and a Kabir song that both start, “I’m on my way”:
I’m on my way to freedom land. I’m on my way to freedom land.

I’m on my way to freedom land, I’m on my way, praise God, I’m on
my way.
374 Bodies of Song
If you don’t go, don’t hinder me. If you don’t go, don’t hinder me.
If you don’t go, don’t hinder me, I’m on my way, praise God, I’m on
my way!
I asked my sister, come and go with me, I asked my brother, come

and go with me,
I asked my friend, come and go with me, I’m on my way, praise God,
I’m on my way!
***
I’m on my way
to meet the guru, on my way
to meet the lord.
about to meet the lord.
About to shed my greed and grasping,

living free.
Shedding crimes, tricks and lies,
living free.
This world-ocean pulled me down;
I’ve won the victory.
A joyous meeting
waits for me.
The spiritual quest is difficult and calls for extraordinary devotion,

inner strength, and courage. Kabir expresses this in songs such as “Lagan
kaṭhin hai mere bhāī,” “Holding on is difficult, my brother” (translated in
chapter 2). Civil rights activists, changing “I” to “we” in an old spiritual,
invoked the same courage and devotion in their multileveled songs:
We shall not, we shall not be moved.

We shall not, we shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.28
Kabir frequently reminds us of a great light within everyone—usually

understood as the presence of ultimate reality or God. People in the civil
rights movement, like Chhotu in Indore (chapter 6), saw this light not
only as the presence of God but also as a source of tremendous power to

stand up against oppression and prejudice.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,

let it shine, let it shine let it shine.
Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine. . . .
Way down in Montgomery, I’m gonna let it shine. . . .
Right there in the jailhouse, I’m gonna let it shine. . . .
Even while “shining” fiercely in the political arena, many civil rights activ-
ists still believed that the light was the presence of God. They had no need
to choose. Each side energized the other.
A perfect mix of religious and political references appears in the fol-
lowing song, which ranges from biblical characters in jail to the chains
associated with slavery to the twentieth-century civil rights movement.
The original chorus, “Keep your hand on the plow,” was changed in this
twentieth-century adaptation to “Keep your eyes on the prize.” Remember
that throughout the song, as in a Kabir bhajan, there are many repetitions of
the refrain, “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.” I have shown only two.
Paul and Silas bound in jail

Had no money for to go their bail
Paul and Silas thought they was lost
Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Freedom’s name is mighty sweet
And soon we’re gonna meet
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now.
Hold on, hold on, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
Only chain that a man can stand

Is that chain o’ hand on hand
I’m gonna board that big Greyhound
Carry the love from town to town
Now only thing I did was wrong
Stayin’ in the wilderness too long
The only thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight.
Hold on, hold on, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
376 Bodies of Song
Another parallel between the religious songs of the black church and
Indian bhakti is the continued vitality of oral tradition even amid writing
and copyrighting. Charles A. Tindley, in the early twentieth century, was
the first great composer of the genre known as gospel music.
Most of the time when we sang these songs, we did not acknowledge
Tindley as composer, because the songs came to us via the oral tra-
dition without Tindley’s name being connected. . . . The singer of a
Tindley composition often sang the song as a church song and some-
times seemed to think it was of her or his own creation. This may
seem fraudulent with our Western sense of copyright; however, within
the Africa-based tradition it is understandable. Within the Black tradi-
tion one is not really considered a singer until one has found one’s
own way of presenting a work. . . . “Stand by me” performed by har-
monica virtuoso Elder Roma Wilson, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama,
the Caravans, and the Violinaires, are all original compositions based
on the Tindley composition. They are singing Tindley’s song trans-
formed by their own creative interpretations. (Reagon 2001, 19)
Tindley himself drew from the oral tradition in writing the songs he then copy-
righted, for example in his 1901 composition “I’ll Overcome Someday.” The
anonymous church song “I’ll Be Alright” was probably a source for him. Thus
the composer Tindley, “operating within the African American oral tradition,
may have drawn from his traditional core as much as he gave to it” (ibid., 20).
Tindley’s version, further adapted, emerged as the anthem of the entire civil
rights movement and eventually spread throughout the world. With an altered
tune and a change from “I” to “we,” it became “We Shall Overcome.” I have
often heard this song in India, with the Hindi words ham honge kāmyāb ek din.
We conclude this excursion into black American “bhajans” with a
sampling of lyrics from six songs that ring with the mingling energies of
music, spirituality, and liberation.
Over my head I hear music in the air,

There must be a God somewhere.
***
Sometimes I am tossed and driven, Lord,

Sometimes I don’t know where to roam.
I’ve heard of a city called heaven

I’ve started to make it my home.
***
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

A long way from home. a long way from home.
***
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,

There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.
Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain.
But then the holy spirit revives my soul again.
***
Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me!

And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
and go home to my Lord and be free.
***
Give me your hand, give me your hand,

all I want is the love of God.
Give me your hand, give me your hand,
we must be lovin’ at God’s command.29
Ways of Being Political with Kabir

Kabir has never been used as deliberately and comprehensively as the
Negro spirituals were used in movements for justice and liberation.
Nevertheless, we can summarize various political understandings and
deployments of Kabir that turned up in the present research. Such under-
standings play out in different ways with different groups—rural Indians,
urban Indians, internationals, intellectuals, artists, upper castes, lower
castes, women, men. And of course there are many differences within
these groups.
378 Bodies of Song
Prahladji is political in that, when expounding on stage, he often

highlights Kabir’s social-political messages: the sharp criticism of caste,
of religious sectarianism and prejudice, of public greed and hypocrisy.
But he does this in a general way. He doesn’t comment specifically on
political events, parties, leaders, movements. I never heard him refer
to the Gujarat carnage of 2002. When he mentions the delusions of
mandir-masjid-gurdwārā (Hindu temple–Muslim mosque–Sikh house of
worship), many listeners will think of the physical and political battles
over the “disputed site” in Ayodhya. But he doesn’t speak of it.
Shabnam decided to make this association explicit in her film
Had-Anhad/Bounded-Boundless. In fact, it was the horrific communal
violence in Gujarat in 2002 that moved her to start the Kabir Project in
the first place. Had-Anhad opens with a scene in Ayodhya and a conver-
sation with locals who celebrated and had participated in the demolition
of the Babri mosque in December 1992. They expressed militant sup-
port of the Hindu god Ram, hostility to Muslims, and determination to
build a Ram temple on the site of the razed mosque. Shabnam juxta-
posed this “Ram” with the “Ram” of Kabir. “Who is Ram?” her narrative
voice asked, and the film explored the question among Kabir Panthis,
Muslims, and Hindus, mostly featuring Sufi singers of Kabir in India
and Pakistan. The opening scene caused some anxiety among friends
who watched the rough cut. One close adviser suggested that it should
be removed.30
Narayanji is political in the life-transforming seriousness with which
he took the issues raised by Eklavya’s Kabir manch in the 1990s, and the
consistency with which he maintained the changes in his worldview and
behavior that began then (detailed in c hapter 6). He stopped observing
caste differences in local Dalit hierarchies, he stopped depending on dei-
ties, he stopped calling Brahmins for rituals, and he started living out the
message of equality by committing to educating girls in his family and
encouraging them to work in the world. He also led the way in encourag-
ing and training women Kabir singers—a surprising innovation in the
Kabir culture of the region.
Suresh Patel and Chhotu Bharti in Indore are directly oriented to
social-political concerns (see chapter 6). For them, Kabir’s message of
radical equality implies working actively on behalf of those groups and
classes that have least power. Through their Kabīr jan vikās samuh they
set up educational programs for migrants, after-school meeting places for
children in poor neighborhoods, and village festivals that combined sing-

ing with consciousness-raising.
Higher-profile movements that resist oppression related to caste, reli-
gion, ethnicity, gender, and poverty occasionally use songs or organize
concerts in the course of their political activities. But they do not adapt
songs of Kabir and other sants and Sufis in a way comparable to the
American civil rights movement’s use of Negro spirituals. The reasons
must include those to which Alok Rai introduced us. Left political appro-
priation stops short of embracing Kabir’s inwardness, as the left is gener-
ally unsympathetic toward religion, suspicious of transcendence, fearful of
bliss. A counterexample was the Sadbhav Yatra in Uttar Pradesh in 1993,
following the destruction of the Babri mosque and outbreak of violence
and bigotry against Muslims (see chapter 6). Organizers from the famous
leftist theater group IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association) invited
the Kabir singers of Malwa for the weeklong traveling political show, and
those singers marched at the head, churning up joy and inspiration all the
way. Here the insight of German film director von Donnersmarck is rel-
evant. The Sadbhav Yatra was organized by theater people. When it comes
to sustaining our full humanity amid tough political struggle—permitting
reason, emotion, imagination, and faith to exist all together—artists are
better than dry ideologues.31
Conversations with Friends

At the beginning of this book, introducing the study of oral traditions,
I said that to know Kabir we have to know people. We conclude, then,
with a series of personal conversations that explore the political/spiritual
question.
In Valley School, Bangalore, 2005

Shabnam interviewed Krishna Nath, a writer and traveler who had been
engaged in some of the pivotal political struggles of India in the twentieth
century. He was at the forefront of those who resisted Indira Gandhi’s 1975–77
Emergency, which had been a shocking move toward dictatorial rule.32
I came from a family burning in the fire of revolution. More than

half my life I spent in the socialist movement—in jails, villages,
380 Bodies of Song
universities, wandering in the Palamu forests in Bihar. We felt

that if the economic structure would change, there would be a
change in consciousness, in literature and culture. We felt that
we must put every ounce of our life energy into this. First inde-
pendence, then later a struggle to remove a single family’s dynas-
tic rule. When that developed we felt a certain hopelessness. But
we struggled against it. I was the one who suggested the slogan
Indirā hatāo, deśh bachāo [“Remove Indira, save the country”]. But
even then, the change and reform that we wanted both bāhar and
bhītar, outside and inside—it came neither outside nor within
our minds. In those days we used to feel that turning away from
the struggles of the real world, sitting in meditative poses and lis-
tening to anahad nād [the unstruck sound], was escapism. Those
who were immersed in anahad nād probably felt: these idiots
are wasting their time and breaking their heads, trying to bring
change in the outer world. We thought that changing the external
world would change people’s minds. Today looking back, I don’t
see a bhītar and bāhar contradiction at all. Outside and inside are
just the trickery of language [shabda kī māyā].
Between Bhopal and Dewas, Madhya Pradesh,

August 2004
One of my most memorable conversations on “political and spiritual” hap-
pened in a car, on the day Shabnam and I ran into R. N. Syag by chance
in Bhopal. We hired a taxi together to go to Dewas, three hours away.
Syag-bhāī was introduced in c hapter 6 in the context of Eklavya’s Kabīr
bhajan evam vichār manch (platform for singing and discussing Kabir).
Here is the part of our conversation that belongs in this chapter. Shabnam
had her camera, so it was all recorded. The speakers are Shabnam (SV),
Syag-bhāī (RNS), and me (LH). We spoke in Hindi.
SV: In the process of the Kabir manch, did you personally have any change
in your religious or spiritual views?
RNS: That’s a tough question. What kind of thing is this spirituality? (Yeh
adhyātmik kyā chīz hai?) I didn’t understand “spiritual” then, and I still
don’t. I relate to people. For me, happiness is based on people forming
relationships and having faith in each other. Listening to bhajans is

fine, we can enjoy that. But where do you draw a line and say that
something is religious or spiritual? I see religion as consisting mainly
of externally imposed dogmas. What interests me is how people form
relationships, what barriers arise between them, how relationships get
broken. This is what I want to understand. For me, there was never any
religious or spiritual question about Kabir. If other people are spiritual
or religious, I have no objection. People seek meaning in their lives in
various ways, and they go wherever they find satisfaction.
SV: So for you religion is basically a negative thing?
RNS: I feel that when people are lacking a support system, when there is
a vacuum in their lives, then they get help from religion. . . . Different
people will define spirituality in different ways. But I find satisfaction
on the human level—from work, family, friends, one’s whole circle. If
there is any problem, any painful situation, we analyze it. This or that
is the reason, and this is the solution. We won’t find the solution in
some other world. If a poor man doesn’t have a strong base, he might
turn in that direction. Maybe even rich men don’t have so much social
strength. I don’t know many rich people so I can’t really guess.
LH: Many Kabir poems speak of the Lord or the unstruck sound. What do
you think of all those bhajans?
RNS: My friend Suresh Patel has gone into that in greater depth. As I keep
saying, my main interest is in social work, the physical world, and amid
this, people and their struggles. So the world of the unstruck sound
where some other kind of happiness is supposed to come—I have
no experience of it and no desire to experience it. Some people who
came to the manch thought these things were important. They would
say—you are studying in primary school, you haven’t had the pleasure
of going to university, so how would you know anything about that joy?
I have no answer to this kind of thing.
Previously in the villages people weren’t getting vaccinations or
immunizations. For smallpox they believed in a mother goddess, they
worshiped her as Shakti, right? But when the disease was entirely elim-
inated the goddess was no longer relevant, and people stopped wor-
shiping her.33 Gradually people come to understand that the cause of
all our problems, our illnesses, our poverty, is a system that people
have created. Who are those people, and why did they want to cre-
ate that system? My interest is in understanding this. I saw limita-
tions in the manch. A number of young people were also interested
382 Bodies of Song
in these [rational, scientific] questions. But there were many people

whose interests were in the spiritual line. Some said, don’t keep raising
these questions. If you do, the pleasure of bhajans will be spoiled, and
the discussion of these questions will also be spoiled. So we created
another circle—Dr. Ambedkar vichār manch. Some people went both
for the Kabir bhajans and for the Ambedkar manch. Some people went
to one and not the other. In the Ambedkar manch, there was more
analysis. What are our problems, what is their root cause, what role
does the system play, why don’t our systems work? We invited people
to give talks and lead discussions. This made sense to me, because the
social world is made by human beings. The structure of the family, the
structure of society, of caste—only human beings can change them.
LH: You have asked where we find satisfaction in life, and you answer that
we find it through work, friends, family, and through acting with our
communities to solve real problems in the world. Very good. We face
problems in the real world, like education, political rights, and so on.
This is a very rational view. Yet within human beings there are ele-
ments that are not rational. Many people have internal problems that
seem to be out of their control. They want to understand themselves.
Why do we do things that we know are not good to do? Why are we not
happy? Why are we so fearful? Why do we feel a lack of love? We would
like our actions in to be based on love. We would like our behavior to
arise from love. But it’s not like that. Why? This becomes a kind of
inner search.
RNS: All right. What will be your method of searching? Will it be psychol-
ogy, or neurology? Whatever your method, it will have its own system.
If it’s a spiritual search, I have no objection. If someone finds happi-
ness in that way, it’s fine with me. But the body is our instrument, it is
the basis for our finding happiness. Today in this country and in this
world, when millions of people don’t have their basic bodily needs met,
when they’re dying like flies before our eyes, if you say “I’m off on a
quest for spiritual happiness,” I can only say that this is not the way
that I would get happiness. . . . Diverse viewpoints are good. If someone
gets happiness and energy from religion, if it’s useful to them, I don’t
say it’s a bad thing. Everyone’s experience is legitimate.
We can compare research on diseases. As I was saying, fifty years
ago people believed that the goddess Shakti controlled disease. Even
today in villages people often say something has happened to the
soul [ātmā]. Someone else can say that the disease is a psychiatric or
neurological problem. Whatever the method, it should be less mysti-

fied. It should be available to all, not limited to you or me.
LH: Kabir says, Dukh meṇ sumiran sab kare, sukh meṇ kare na koī. Everyone
takes up spiritual practice when they’re suffering, no one does it when
they’re happy. There was suffering in my life thirty years ago. I was
searching. Did I need a doctor? A psychiatrist? Gurus? Lovers? I tried
a lot of things, but nothing worked. My life was a mess. Even before
things reached such a crisis, I was attracted to this kind of search.
Where would I find a world view and a practice that would enable me
to recognize and understand myself, especially the ways in which I had
tied myself up inside and lost my freedom? How could I get liber-
ated [mukt] from something if I didn’t understand it? I’m not talking
about the big religious liberation [mukti], release from the cycle of birth
and death. But in this life, how could I get free from these problems?
I heard about Buddhism and started doing a Buddhist form of medi-
tation. I learned a lot from that. You may say, and it may be true, that
this is an activity for the leisure classes. But I couldn’t get away from it.
My own behavior was destroying me. Why was I doing this? It seemed
I had no control over it.
SV: This is also relevant to our relationship to society. If you’re destroying
yourself, your mind and heart become very constricted. You can’t do
anything for others.
LH: Yes, if I have no love for myself, how will I love others?
RNS: There can be various causes for this. Our childhood, socialization,
family composition, school structure, local environment. There is no
reason why we have to look beyond this world for an answer. I’m saying
that whatever we are today is created by this world.
LH: I’m not saying that the solution is outside this world. But the problem
I’m describing is also internal, and it’s very deep.
RNS: It may be deep, that’s another matter. A disease may be very deep, but
the cure can only come from human beings.
LH: OK, so to solve these problems we must look at society?
RNS: That’s what I believe.
LH: I also believe it. Even Kabir believes it. He criticizes society, but never
in separation from our inner experience. You yourself said that a great
source of Kabir’s power is that he constantly asks us to look within our-
selves, to learn from our own experience (see c hapter 6). That’s what
I was trying to do. How? By sitting. That’s all. Sitting still. Observing
the breath. This isn’t an easy task, because the mind is always running
384 Bodies of Song
in different directions. The mind does not want to sit in one place. So
I learned about my mind, I learned about my body, my desires, my fears.
And inevitably I would reach a place where I was helpless, blocked,
couldn’t make any progress. What did my meditation teachers say? Sit
right there, where there is no solution. Where you find only obstacles.
Sit there. Observe mind, body, feelings. Learn. There’s no rest or stabil-
ity in the mind? Fine. What is in the mind? Thus slowly, slowly, slowly,
I learned something, but not by rational methods. I learned by experi-
ence. What is the breath? What is consciousness? What is responsibil-
ity? What is morality? What is in our hands, and what is not in our
hands? What should our attitude be toward that? And above all—my
real desire, my real pain—it seemed to be something about the heart.
Why was the heart so narrow? It was terrible that my heart couldn’t
seem to open. I wanted to do something for society, wanted to help oth-
ers, but how? This question was very urgent for me. I had no choice.
Slowly things began to change. Something opened. I saw that whatever
I did would be incomplete if I didn’t understand my own condition, my
fear, greed, grasping mentality. I wouldn’t be able to do any good work
in the world in that condition, with a heart that couldn’t open. So this
is my spiritual story. If you don’t have that kind of deep dissatisfaction
within yourself, it’s great. I see that you are doing your work whole-
heartedly. It’s really good. But it seems to me that many people have
some kind of problem of the heart.
RNS: What is the root cause of this problem? Were you born with it? Did
it come from some spiritual power? Or did it come from the social
and economic environment? You say your heart was closed. Was it bio-
logically closed? You say that through spiritual work your heart could
open. I can give you ten examples of how a closed heart can be opened
through social and cultural work. There are various paths. This is your
experience. I have not taken that path so I can’t comment on it. My
experience tells me that whatever problems we have, we should look
for the causes in our families, societies, schools, systems. Some prob-
lems are being solved, others are being created. We continue to work
with that. We should think about happiness and comfort. How many
comforts do we need? How many clothes? Do we need to have a big-
ger house? What else? What brings satisfaction? I would say that if
there is some spiritual process, then it can be demystified. What you
have learned in thirty years somebody else might be able to learn in
three years.
SV: This is what Goenka-ji has done with his vipassana [meditation]
courses. Completely demystified, nonsectarian, no religion involved. It
is a demystified technique which he feels is valuable in society.
RNS: I’m saying that there are some people who do fine without any spiri-
tual practice.
LH: Completely right. I would add that everyone has some kind of faith
which helps them go on. It doesn’t have to be faith in God. But it’s
beyond rationality. Despite all the obstacles, we keep living, we keep
making efforts. It’s not rational. From some source we get this inspi-
ration. You have your faith, I have mine. Even when we can’t solve a
problem with our brains, we continue to believe in life. In that sense
we are all believers.
RNS: Sure. We have faith in the people we work with, faith in ourselves.
That’s how our work can go forward. No argument. But there is a
process of change in the world. When we see that the forces in the
world are very oppressive, we look for a solution. Where did science
come from? Great problems can open new paths. In the past, people
looked for a supernatural answer to every problem. . . . Science was not
just plucked out of the air. It arose from needs. It was to understand
the world and to do something about the world that all the streams
of science emerged, including anthropology, sociology, psychology.
Universities have a great role. Academics can come together with activ-
ists and we can accomplish a lot. We don’t have to stay in our separate
compartments.
LH [reaching out and shaking hands with Syag]: On that point, we
have achieved unity!
The next day I reflected in my notebook on the conversation. I had talked

about the connection between inner and outer in my own history, but the
personal story might have obscured more general implications. Why is there
so much cruelty, exploitation, violence, inequality, refusal to share resources
necessary to life? Many people are lost in deluded self-interest, clinging to
what they have and driven to amass more, urgently seeking to attain a sense
of security, which continuously eludes them. How do we get free of such
compulsions? How do we stop lying to ourselves as well as others? How do
we penetrate and go beyond the fears that paralyze us and cause us to act in
ways that serve our imagined self-interest, our individual “security,” while
we ignore or harm others? How to wake up from the fractured dreams of
violence, greed, and self-clinging? Just as structural change won’t come just
386 Bodies of Song
from singing bhajans, inner transformation won’t necessarily occur by set-

ting up schools and health centers. In both social change and spiritual work,
we are seeking to be liberated from our narrow, painful, fearful selves.
In Madison, Wisconsin, November 2011

After hearing Alok Rai in 2002, I planned to argue against the position he
seemed to represent in referencing the story of Lenin and the Appassionata.
Later it seemed wiser to inquire more directly into his views. I tried to con-
nect with him in India, but we couldn’t work out a meeting there. Finally in
2011, I caught up with him at the South Asia conference in Madison. First
I quoted to him his own words about the “seduction” of the mystical, the
dangers of attraction to “transcendent experience,” and the “embarrassment
on the political left about this seeming surrender to the idiom of religion.”
Alok Rai (AR): I suppose it goes back to Nehru’s own ambivalence about
religion, because at some level he inherits this nineteenth-century
rationalist confidence that religion is superstition and that the task of
socialism lies in shedding all that. The sort of early twentieth-century
H. G Wellsian confidence—
LH: But also Marxian and materialist?
AR: Also Marxian, of course. And the issue has obviously come up on the
Indian left with regard to the issue of using a religious idiom or not
using it. They’ve struggled with all kinds of figures—Kabir, Tulsidas,
even Vivekanand for that matter.
LH: Well yes, because of the way that Vivekanand and Tulsidas have been
appropriated, I would struggle with them too. But Kabir, who is in no
way going to support the politics of hate or religious nationalism? Still
they will struggle with him because of the religious problem?
AR: Because of using the religious idiom.
LH: Is that all you want to say about it? Do you yourself struggle with Kabir
for that reason?
AR: I don’t. I don’t think so. But a religious idiom comes packaged differ-
ently for different groups of people. To shift it from the ground of social-
ism to something else—for instance the embarrassment that Kumkum
Sangari struggles with writing about Mirabai. What is a feminist to do
with someone who makes surrender a form of liberation? I suppose
there are two aspects to it. It has partly to do with using religion as
a sort of mobilization device. But there’s also a further purpose—not
making merely an instrumentalist use of religion, but using it to orga-

nize the emotions that religion gives rise to.
LH: Some of the people I interviewed in Dewas aren’t worried about the
instrumentalist view. They say openly—we are struggling against
injustice and inequality. We’ll use Kabir if he helps us. We’ll use Marx
if he helps us. We’ll use Ambedkar, we’ll use anybody, and we’ll discard
anything [in their work] that doesn’t help us. There’s an assumption
that the part of Kabir that stresses going inward, that talks about attain-
ing certain states of concentration and awakening and illumination . . .
I can see you’re already reacting—
AR: Yes, with that the left is distinctly uncomfortable. I’m not personally.
I am not.
LH: Tell me why they are and you’re not.
AR: Speaking personally—and I am a bit embarrassed, let me say quickly,
because many of my friends would find this a surrender to that idiom.
But I think of myself as having a kind of transcendental longing with-
out expecting that transcendental longing to be gratified by some avail-
able system of faith, which is what religion is. At its best, at its finest, it
is that. Of course religion is a lot of other, more inferior things. But at
its finest it is an established set of answers—
LH (breaking in): Not established! Constantly contested! And a figure
like Kabir also calls on you as an individual. He resolutely refuses to
be institutionalized. So if that is the case, in your longing for some-
thing transcendental—would the testimony or the poetic voice of Kabir
interest you?
AR: Yes, unmistakably. The particular occasion that I referred to, Anahad
Garje, was very, very moving [see n. 5 below]. This was in the immediate
aftermath of Ayodhya [the destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu
mobs and subsequent widespread communal violence].
LH: Regarding the embarrassment at feeling moved by the music, maybe
we could get back to the Lenin-Gorky conversation. At first I was
really—I’m looking for a more sophisticated word, but I was upset,
I was put off. I thought: there’s something really wrong with that
viewpoint, when Lenin says I love the Appassionata but I’m not going
to listen because it opens me up, it makes me too vulnerable, makes
me want to caress people when I should be smashing their heads, and
so on. I found that a dangerous and destructive kind of attitude. And
so did the German filmmaker who saw how that attitude helped to
388 Bodies of Song
create the East German dystopia. He did it brilliantly. He was inspired

by the same story. Do you think his construction of Lenin was fair?
AR: There are two moments. One is that he is moved by the Appassionata.
Somehow one doesn’t imagine Stalin listening to the Appassionata.
Here is someone who confesses to being moved, so moved that it actu-
ally interferes with his capacity for action. To experience the dilemma
as a dilemma already says something about the person. The fact that he
chooses what he chooses points to something else.
LH: My first impulse was to take off polemically against Lenin on the basis
of this story, though I didn’t know much about Lenin. Then when I
looked carefully at two translations, I found it more interesting. As you
say, he starts out by saying I am deeply moved by it. It makes me proud,
he says, perhaps naively so, that people can work such miracles, produce
such marvels. Then Gorky’s description shows him wrinkling up his
eyes, smiling sadly. So the next thing he says seems to include a sense
of irony, an awareness that he’s saying a double-edged thing. I want to
say sweet things and pat the heads of people who can create such beauty,
but I need to be bashing their heads, though theoretically we are against
violence. . . . He may be joking with himself a little. But this crossroads
where he stands, and the choice that he seems to make . . . if he is really
making that choice, if he’s choosing the path of a steely-eyed ideology of
the state where you really have to beware of opening your heart, of being
vulnerable, then it does create the danger that the filmmaker expanded
upon, of a sterile, heartless, brutal totalitarian state.
AR: The Soviet Union was a large-scale playing out of choosing that road.
LH: Coming back to India and the Sufi-sant poets and the embarrassment
of the left, you speak of the religious idiom of the poetry. But it isn’t just
religious. As I said, you could speak of it as an individual movement
toward self-knowledge—
AR: A moment of silence, a moment of wonder, a moment of existential
bewilderment.
LH: For that you have to be open, you have to be vulnerable, you can’t be in
control. But there’s more than a spiritual or existential moment. There’s
also the power of the music, which you were talking about when you
made that comment. You said we’re listening to this powerful music,
but we ought to exercise a certain caution. You didn’t show your vul-
nerable side when you said that. You identified yourself with Lenin’s
warning.
AR: In my public speaking I present myself as being more certain than

I really am. In conversations like this I can be tentative, I can be uncer-
tain. But there’s something about a podium. . . .
LH: So you sided with what appeared to be Lenin’s position on that, in
warning us. Watch out, don’t get too carried away. Don’t bliss out on the
music without remembering what Lenin said.
AR: It’s also because of the attempt by Sahmat to organize the Sufi and
bhakti concerts [in 1993]. There was a controversy at that time. I was
marking that, not taking a personal position.
LH: I’m interested in the question of whether you need to choose.
AR: I would think that being vulnerable and sensitive to the pain of oth-
ers is actually a very important first step in a human politics, a politics
that’s capable of being human.
LH: And a key to the inhumanity of some communist states [in the twenti-
eth century], when they abandoned that.
AR: I would say that. But I’m also conscious that there’s a tradition of the left
that speaks of scientific socialism, understood in a nineteenth-century
way, almost a technocratic socialism.
LH: Maybe we should be more forthcoming in not aligning ourselves with
such a tradition. Instead of bowing to that tradition on the left, maybe
we should not bow.
AR: I actually want to signal the opposite. It is this [vulnerability] which is
a sign of the capacity for goodness.
In Lunyakhedi, August 2012
[From my notebook]
I’m at a workshop where fourteen people from big cities have come
to get the flavor, music, and meaning of Kabir bhajans in Malwa.
They have been infected by the Kabir folk music bug in urban festi-
vals and concerts, Shabnam’s films and CDs, satsangs with Prahladji
and other folksingers in Mumbai and Bangalore homes. For five
days they are in the village singing, listening, learning, conversing.
On the third day, when Prahladji, Kaluramji, and Narayanji are here
together leading the singing and discussion, I notice that the songs
and conversation are all about the fine points of inner spiritual mean-
ing. Even when Kaluramji sings a bhajan where the central meta-
phor is a broom, and God is cast as the universal sweeper (bhangī,
390 Bodies of Song
the quintessential untouchable), the interpretation offered is purely

spiritual. So I raise the question: What happened to all the social
consciousness you singers developed in the Eklavya Kabir manch?
Isn’t this bhajan an expression by Dalits about their own dignity and
value, and a protest against casteism? You spent so many years dis-
cussing how Kabir has both a social and a spiritual side, and in the
manch you gave special attention to the social side. Now it seems
there is nothing to talk about but breath, consciousness, emptiness,
chakras, love, wordless joy, and the nature of the guru.
There follows a somewhat surprising discussion. First Prahladji (PT)

and Kaluramji say that it’s problematic and can even be dangerous to sing
the songs that criticize caste and religion in public programs. They give
examples of how upper-caste and religious people can react to this kind of
thing. I say: Here you are not on a public stage but in your own home with
sympathetic people. Still you aren’t singing those songs or raising those
questions. PT says: What’s the need? These people already understand and
agree with the social message of Kabir. Then he goes to another argument
that is familiar to me from the years I’ve known him. If you say directly to
somebody’s face, “Your ideas about caste or religion are wrong, you should
change them,” it won’t do any good. That approach isn’t effective. But if they
are moved by the bhajans and the bāṇī, if they understand deeply the spiri-
tual message, they undergo a true change from within. He gives examples of
how this has happened—as with a village ṭhākur (member of a ruling caste)
who was full of caste prejudice but who changed from within after being
moved by the bhajans and PT’s way of explaining them. It is only a spiritual
change that is enduring (sthāī), he says. I have often heard this from him.
Falguni, a lawyer from Mumbai, agrees. She says that when you truly realize
the equal presence of the same radiance, the same divinity in every body,
evoked by Kabir in so many powerful and poetic ways (and by implication,
when you see the same sorts of lies, pretensions and delusions in everyone),
then automatically your social views and behavior will change.
But I am not satisfied. I suggest that it’s also important to talk overtly
about these things, and to take action in the social and political sphere. For
every dose of Gandhi (who focused on changing hearts and resisted legis-
lation and structural change), we need a dose of Ambedkar (who fought
for legal, educational, and other structural safeguards for equality and jus-
tice, and who constantly called out the hypocrisy and cruelty of existing
institutions). Many of the workshop participants appreciate this discussion.
I think most of them have social and political commitments in the cities.
But they are also deeply drawn to the psychospiritual depths that Kabir’s
words open up. They wish to refresh themselves here, to draw from that
well—or perhaps, like the pearl diver who appears in the poetry, to plunge
into that ocean.
In Berkeley, California, June 2012

“I’m in despair about the Buddhists,” said my friend Joanna Macy,
author, activist, and meditator.
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had a hunch.
“They’re becoming more self-centered. They’re not paying attention
to the problem that engulfs us all. Have you seen the cover of the latest
Shambhala Sun?”
I had seen it. Shambhala Sun, one of the glossy American Buddhist
magazines that are showing remarkable staying power amid the general
decay and death of paper journalism, had featured in large type across
its cover the heading “I want to be. . . .” Beneath that was a vertical col-
umn of adjectives: Peaceful, Insightful, Loving, Grounded, Skillful, Wise,
Genuine. Each adjective was linked to an article in the magazine that
would guide the aspirant in that direction. To Joanna, this seemed to sig-
nal a metastasizing narcissism, one of the dangers of an inner-directed
spiritual practice. “I want to be like this. I want to look like that. I want to
transform myself.”
Joanna, a Buddhist practitioner and an elder of the American
engaged Buddhist community now in her eighties, has devoted many
years to writing and to public work aimed at saving the earth. She was
partly speaking with humorous hyperbole when she claimed to be in
despair about the Buddhists. But she was also pointing to a deeper
meaning. “Despair” isn’t just a negative word for her: one of her ear-
liest innovations was a workshop model that she called “Despair and
Empowerment.” The idea was that people had to move out of denial, to
allow themselves to feel the despair and grief that would arise if they
really faced the massive extinction of species and the death of ecosys-
tems, in order to awaken and join in efforts to reverse the destruction
of the natural world. Joanna has been tirelessly engaged in work to con-
nect all of us to the earth’s crisis, to related issues of justice, and to
each other for many decades. A look at her website (www.joannamacy.
net) will demonstrate the commitment, freshness, and imagination of
392 Bodies of Song
all she does. When we met that day, she had just published a new book
and was continuing to lead workshops and mentor younger people all
over the country. She describes her work since the 1960s as grounded in
Buddhist teachings, systems theory, and deep ecology.
Here is the point of this vignette. Devotion to spiritual practice, insight,
and personal transformation is not opposed to political commitment,
socially engaged compassion, and work for justice. And devotion to the
personal spiritual path is opposed to such engagement. This contradic-
tion has been felt through the millennia. Why did the Buddha leave his
wife, newborn child, and kingdom to wander possessionless through for-
ests, practicing asceticism and meditation for years? Why did he estab-
lish a tradition of renouncers? Fast-forwarding 2,500 years, why do many
Buddhists in the practice centers of California cultivate such an exquisite
awareness of their own psychological states and the nuances of their per-
sonal relationships while not managing to find time for the death of the
planet? Transforming oneself can be a full-time job. It can fill the hori-
zon. It is very interesting. On the other hand, changing the world can
be more than a full-time job. Activists are understandably impatient with
“navel-gazers”; yet without self-knowledge and self-connection, activists
are likely to burn out, to become violent or bitter or unconsciously shaped
by the very things they are fighting against.
To say that inner and outer are not opposed is to solve nothing. It is
true and untrue. To say that inner and outer are opposed is equally true
and untrue. The contradiction must be lived out and investigated in every
circumstance in which it arises. Kabir is a provocateur. Kabir is a deep well
of poetry and thought. In the field of reception and interpretation, we con-
front the welter of circumstances in which the question can be asked. We
see how others have dealt with this problem, and we work out solutions
for ourselves.
Emailing with Vipul Rikhi, September 2012

In a generous commentary on a draft of this chapter, novelist and poet
Vipul Rikhi said:
Resolving this dichotomy is more important to you than it might

have been to Kabir. . . . Why does everyone need to be an activist? Or
why does everyone need to be a spiritualist? Or why must there be a
“resolution” to this dichotomy that is satisfactory to the mind? Does
one really need to lay down a ground where the political-spiritual

debate will be resolved forever? In the end . . . everyone does what
they feel is fit. You may call it dharma. In a symbolic sense, this
is the idea of the four estates (the priests, warriors, traders, work-
ers). If a buddha needs to go away, why shouldn’t he? If people feel
deeply called to protest against various structures and forms of
exploitation, without devoting too much time to inner questions,
why shouldn’t they?
I agree with Vipul that we do not need to resolve the debate forever. But
this statement should also not resolve the debate forever, breeding com-
placency. Taking a position can be very important. “Taking no position” is
a position. I hear truth in Kabir’s “If I say yes, it isn’t so, and I can’t say
no. . . .” And I hear truth in the cracked voice of Florence Reece, a Kentucky
woman who composed a song in 1931 when coal miners were fighting for
decent working conditions against brutally cruel bosses:
Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on?
They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there.
You’ll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on?34
Skyping with Shabnam, Bangalore and Berkeley,

August 2013
After an unexpectedly intense conversation, we put together in writing the
main points that Shabnam made.
If you define political as outward, material, and structural, and spiri-

tual as inward and personal—if politics only means “movements”
run by “activists”—you’ve already capitulated to a false dichotomy.
Look at Lila-behn in Bisalkhedi village. She and her friend, the
other Lila, have been so determined to learn bhajan singing from
Narayanji and Kaluramji for the last few years. Someone might view
their bhajan singing as an insignificant pastime, one that doesn’t do
anything to change society.
But on meeting them, chatting and spending time with them,
I see so clearly how they are negotiating quite oppressive patriarchal
394 Bodies of Song
power equations within their families in order to go out and sing.

They are resisting social attitudes that disapprove of women singing
and playing instruments, and attitudes of discomfort when all of
this gives women mobility and agency. It was poignantly pertinent
too, that all the bhajans they sang that day when we visited them
were about seeking the true Beloved. The songs directly juxtaposed
the limited frameworks of family and husband against a more tran-
scendent reality. It seems to me that in aspiring to a transcendent
experience they are negotiating real social and familial power rela-
tions, very much in this world. Why is this not defined as “political”?
Look at Ram Prasad Aradiya and his manḍalī in Dhunsi
village—men who work as laborers, who are economically and
socially marginal, who may live at subsistence levels, who are not
accorded a sense of dignity and personhood by the caste-ridden
structures of mainstream society. In the satsang, we witness them
claiming that space as their own, with a sense of joy and ecstasy.
Watching them dance and sing, I recognize the sense of power and
personhood that the poetry and music are filling their bodies with.
Tellingly, the song they are singing is “Ānand bhayo re āngana mā”
(“Joy has come to our courtyard”). Tell me, if this is not political,
what is?
Of course, someone might view this satsang as a space of inac-
tion, sitting around and playing manjīrās, while the real job of rev-
olution waits outside. But who are we to say that the power and
agency and dignity that these poems and songs give does not spill
out of the satsang space and into the spaces of lived social reality?
How would we map subtle inner shifts of consciousness? How can
we not call these “political”?
In that packed room in Dhunsi, where we filmed Ram Prasad’s
mandalī singing and playing while others spontaneously jumped
up to dance, there was a shelf with pictures of Dr. Ambedkar and
Satguru Kabir side by side. We had a conversation about them.
One man said Ambedkar was their guru for social and political
rights, and Kabir was their guru of spiritual and inner worlds
that gave them joy, strength, solace, perspective on the nature
of this world and their lives in it. These two went together natu-
rally. Ambedkar didn’t need to join a bhajan mandalī. Kabir didn’t
need to create a political party and fight elections. Both did what
was true to their nature, and together they created a life-fulfilling

wholeness.
Oh Freedom
I complete this chapter in late August 2013, when Americans and others
are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech, delivered at the historic 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom. I attended the march. I was twenty-one years old at
the time. Today, as I drive across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, my radio
is vibrating with the sounds of that era. The boundary-crossing meanings
of “liberation” are in the air. The expansive powers of song are evident as
I sing out with the radio, loud as if I were still there—
Oh freedom
Oh freedom
Oh freedom over me!
And before I’ll be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
and go home to my Lord and be free!
The broadcast continues with parts of Pete Seeger’s Carnegie Hall con-
cert of June 1963, which highlighted music of the civil rights movement.
He talks about the awe-inspiring courage and faith of those who faced
vicious dogs, fire hoses, phalanxes of riot police, tear gas, and bullets
with solemnity, dignity, humor, and joy. Their joy was defiant. They
would march in silence, not responding to threats and obscenities, until
the moment they were arrested, and then they would burst into a dance
and a song:
I ain’t scared of your jail ’cause I want my freedom,

want my freedom, want my freedom,
ain’t scared of your jail ’cause I want my freedom,
want my freedom now!
Kabir and his nirguṇ poet friends won’t solve the political-spiritual
problem for us. But they will provoke and challenge us not to forget our
396 Bodies of Song
humanity under any circumstances, and to figure out what that means
and what work we are called to do.
Seeker, there’s something

you’re supposed to do.
So do it!
This life is a jewel, hard to find.
You’ve wandered through eight million
four hundred thousand births. There’s someone
you’re supposed to meet.
So meet!
You tried mantras, prayers, fasts, deprivation,

ran through the six schools of philosophy,
but never found wisdom beyond wisdom,
just stumbled on in delusion.
A voice says Vishnu’s in Vaikunth,

a third says the Lord’s in Shiva’s city.
For ages, they’ve marketed these products.
An ignorant person says God’s far away.

Someone who knows says God is close.
A true guru gives a precious hint:
The path to God’s in every breath.
The guru’s whole mind is revealed.
Someone recites a wordless word.
Bananath says, listen friend:
my true guru’s voice
is shouting at you.35
Even when they criticize society and religion in the harshest terms, they
are calling us back to ourselves, to life, compassion, the aspiration to
nonviolence.

Why have you forgotten your own country?
The deluded gardener tears off a leaf.

In every leaf is life!
He tears a leaf, gives it to a stone god.
That god has no life, you crazy!
The branch is Brahma, the leaf

is Vishnu, the flower is Shiva.
He tears a flower, gives it to a god
that has no life.
You call priests from all over.

They march around your house,
break a coconut, offer the shell to god,
and eat the meat themselves.
You make fine rice pudding

to offer to god’s image.
A dog pees on the god,
a squirrel eats the pudding, you crazy.
When your father’s alive, you throw a shoe at him.

When he dies you take him to the Ganges.
Alive, you wouldn’t feed him.
Dead, you feed crows in his memory.
You pray to Bhairu and Bhavani for a child,

you pay by cutting off a goat’s head.
don’t chop off the head of someone else’s child!

Why have you forgotten your own country?36
They know sorrow and death, but they are not afraid of joy.

owning nothing.
The gladness you get singing the name,

you won’t get that gladness from wealth.
398 Bodies of Song
At last this body will meet with dust.

Why strut with pride?

you meet God
in joy.37
They can think and analyze, but as artists they burst beyond the experi-
ential and expressive limits of logic and analysis. They don’t separate body
and spirit, and this is a key to their political and spiritual genius.
No moon, no sun.
Without sun, explosions of light.
Ah! Don’t go to another world,
dear friend, see the light right here.
Dear friend! A mute person

sings beautiful melodies,
a deaf one hears, a lame one leaps
and dances, friend, a blind one
starts to see.
Dear friend! In the dome of the sky,

a drunken yogi blazes.
There’s no fire or holy ash, friend,
and no one to blaze.
Dear friend! On the peak of emptiness,

a fight breaks out.
It’s no place for cowards, friend.
Who can rely on a coward?
Dear friend! Gulabi Das sings,

the lock on my heart has opened!
Bhavani Nath says, friend,
my body shines.38
Notes
In t roduc t ion
1. I would like to clarify the use of “North India” in the book’s title. The region
including Madhya Pradesh is often referred to as Central India, distinguished
from North India. Indeed “Madhya” means “middle,” and the region is located
nearly in the center of the subcontinent. However, another way of speaking of
major regions is to distinguish simply between North and South India. That clas-
sification refers to language families, with the Sanskrit-based Indo-Aryan lan-
guages in the North and the Dravidian languages, which had completely different
origins, in the South. It is in this latter sense that I use “North India” in the title.
2. Some poets in the Sikh Ādi Granth sometimes sign off with suno, but it is not
constant as in Kabir. Interestingly, while suno is present in the vast major-
ity of well-known written and oral compositions of Kabir, it is absent in most
Kabir-attributed verses in the Ādi Granth.
3. In the introduction to Hess and Singh 2002, a section called “Rough Rhetoric”
analyzes this vocative style. Hess 1987a is an earlier version.
4. Chapter 1 discusses anahad nād along with other terms used for this profound
sound, such as shabda, bāṇī, etc.
5. As Jack Hawley has pointed out to me, we don’t know that Kabir was illiterate. Some
of his modern devotees believe that he was not only literate but knew Sanskrit and
read ancient scriptures. This view seems to be motivated by their feeling that
it is insulting to call him illiterate. We will never know for sure whether Kabir
could read. But there is no evidence that he ever wrote anything down, and his
traditional body of works includes these often-quoted lines: “I don’t know ink or
paper, / these hands never touch a pen. / The greatness of four ages / Kabir tells
with his mouth alone” (Hess and Singh 2002, 111–12). In Varanasi in the 1970s,
I met Hazariprasad Dvivedi, the great Hindi critic, creative writer, and author of a
400 Notes to pages 3–5
classic book on Kabir. Referring to this couplet, he told me that while the English
term “well-read” has been translated into Hindi, the traditional term is bahuśhrut,
“well-heard.” Kabir did not read or write, suggested Prof. Dvivedi, but he learned
by oral tradition the contents of the Upaniṣhads and other literature.
6. “I agree with the critic who said that reading was not merely the mental absorp-
tion of a text, but a physical act in which the colour, weight and texture of the
book, together with the physical context (beach, bed, comfortable chair, train) con-
tributed toward the total experience” (Sacks 2000, 73).
7. This was Imre Bangha, the great Hungarian scholar of early North Indian litera-
ture (and expert in manuscript study). We were introduced by Ashok Vajpeyi at
the lounge of Delhi’s India International Centre Annexe, which friends some-
times referred to as Ashok’s office. I don’t remember the date—sometime
between 2002 and 2005.
8. Many other scholars have studied Indian texts in close connection with their per-
formative and social contexts. For instance, anthropologists Ann Gold (1992) and
Susan Wadley (2004) have worked closely with singers of oral epics in Rajasthan.
Kirin Narayan (1997) has written beautifully of Himalayan folktales as told among
women. Milton Singer, a trailblazing anthropologist of the previous generation,
used “cultural performance” as a primary category of analysis (1972, esp. chaps.
3 and 6). Parita Mukta (1997) has studied Mirabai as she is constructed by people
of “low” caste and class in rural Rajasthan. Nancy Martin’s work on Mirabai and
Kabir (2000, 2002) also focuses on how poets, poetry, and meanings are produced
in the cultures of ordinary people in Rajasthan. Paula Richman has devoted her-
self to demonstrating, in several richly elaborated works, the performative heart
of the Rāmāyaṇa in a multitude of contexts. A number of J. S. Hawley’s works
are very important to my present study. But none of these scholars focuses on
oral texts and their relation to written and otherwise recorded texts the way I do.
Christian Novetzke (2008) and Philip Lutgendorf (1991) come closest to my
endeavor, each working with a specific North Indian bhakti poet, attending to his-
tory and studying their texts in performative as well as written forms. Lutgendorf
works with a more or less fixed text, the Rāmcharitmānas of Tulsidas. Namdev,
like Kabir, does not have a fixed canonized text, so Novetzke pays a great deal of
attention to the many forms and processes by which Namdev’s poetry gets written
down and transmitted orally.
9. Examples of introductions in English by scholars who take a serious interest
in texts and their histories: my works of 2002 [1983]; 1994b; 1987b; Vaudeville
1993; Dharwadker 2003; Callewaert 2000; Lorenzen 1991; Hawley 2005, especially
chaps. 14–15.
10. Though his exact dates are unknown, 1398–1518 are commonly cited. Some
scholars who doubt the accuracy of the conventional (and miraculous) 120-year
lifespan have suggested a death date around 1448.
Notes to pages 5–22 401
11. Some say he was born in this Muslim family, while others believe he was adopted
by Muslim parents after his birth mother, a Brahmin widow, set him afloat on
Lahartara Pond. For the histories of various Kabir legends, see Lorenzen 1991
and Lorenzen 2006, chap. 5.
12. The Adī Granth was finalized in 1604, but its precursor manuscripts, known as
the Goindval Pothis, were compiled in the 1570s. See Mann 1996 and 2001.
13. There are several distinct lineages of Kabir Panthis. See c hapter 7 below for an
introduction.
14. My favorite essay setting this forth has long been A. K. Ramanujan’s “Who
Needs Folklore?” (1999 [1990]). Wendy Doniger’s illuminating article, “Fluid and
Fixed Texts in India,” appeared first in Flueckiger and Sears 1991, with a version
in Doniger 1995, 56–64.
15. Callewaert 2013; Callewaert 2000; Mann 1996 and 2001; Hawley 2005; and
Agrawal 2009a. My early work on this: Hess 1987b.
16. See Fish 1972 and 1980. Kenneth Bryant (1979) brought this kind of reader
response analysis to Hindi bhakti poetry in his book on Surdas. I was inspired
by both authors when I wrote “Rough Rhetoric,” first published as Hess 1987a,
later included in the introduction to Hess and Singh 2002 [1983].
17. For example, Hess 1993, 1994a, 2006; Hess and Schechner 1977.
18. “Folk” has become a contested term in discussions of music and other forms of
culture. In speaking of folksingers and folksongs in this book, I refer to a music
that is quite easily accessible to local people and is not characterized by the kinds
of complexity and refinement that require years of training. This loose defini-
tion, I realize, leaves a lot of gray area.
19. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Banerjee and Dube 2009.
This is also the central story of a documentary film, Virmani 2008b.
C h a p t er 1
1. Ashok Vajpeyi, mentioned at various points in this book, is a great poet and
writer in Hindi, a cultural leader who has shaped and led important institutions
(like the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, the Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi, and the
Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University, now in Wardha, Maharashtra).
He is an ever-present, effervescent contributor to Indian cultural and intellectual
life. He has been unstintingly generous and encouraging to me and at crucial
moments has been the one who made it possible for my work to go forward.
2. Bhajan: Panchhiḍā bhāī.
3. Most people refer to our friend respectfully as Tipanyaji, in deference to his
status both as a renowned singer and Kabir expounder and as a schoolteacher.
Over the years, Shabnam and I and others associated with the Kabir Project
began using his first name, Prahladji. We never discussed it, but it just hap-
pened. Though this was a bit startling in local culture, I think we tacitly made the
move because we addressed other local singers by their first names, and some
democratic impulse in us wanted to grant equal respect to all the singers.
4. For information on the Kabir Panth, see c hapter 7.
5. Some of the other names of poets we hear when Malwa mandalīs sing “Kabir”
are Dharamdas, Gorakhnath, Bhavani Nath, Gulabi Das, Shivguru, Bananath,
Bherya, Ishwardas, Ramdas, Ramanand, Brahmanand, and Nanak. Many of
them are associated with the Nath Yogi tradition (on which see Henry 1991; A.
Gold 1992).
6. Questions about women and gender in Malwa Kabir singing culture don’t get much
attention in this book. We touch briefly on gender issues in conversations with
Prahladji’s wife Shantiji and other family members, and in occasional stories and
descriptions—for instance, two male singers have since 2011 taken up the unusual
project of training some women and girls to sing Kabir. It would be worthwhile to
examine gender more fully in relation to Kabir, including who sings, speaks, and
worships; and how people understand the representation of women and female
voices in Kabir’s poetry. That project is not, however, taken up in this book.
7. Chapter 6 is devoted to Eklavya’s Kabir manch.
8. This is a standard trope in the poetry. Swan (haṃsa) and heron (bagulā) are both
white water birds, but the former represents the pure spiritual essence while the
latter is hypocritical and impure. Though it stands still like a yogi in meditation,
it is just waiting to spear a fish (nasty non-veg food).
9. Bhajan: Rām rame soī gyānī.
10. See Bhattacharya 1996; and c hapter 6 below, n. 16.
11. [PT] at the beginning of a quotation means that the speaker is Prahladji. In the
rest of this section, till the subheading that begins “Inside and Outside,” all the
inset quotations are spoken by Prahladji in interviews conducted in February
and March 2002.
12. Prahladji refers here to the common Kabirian phrase choṭ lagnā, to be struck or
wounded. One is struck by the Word or the guru’s teaching. It leaves a “wound,”
a mark that changes a person profoundly.
13. The lines are in a bhajan referred to sometimes as Aisī khetī kījai, sometimes as
Nīch sangat mat kījai. It is on his MP3 recording entitled Syānī surtā.
14. See n. 8 above.
15. See n. 21 below and the “Guru” section of c hapter 4.
16. Often called chetāvanī or warning song, a wake-up call, causing one to become
conscious. Discussed as a theme in c hapter 4.
17. Koī suntā hai is translated and discussed in Hess 2009a. It is also the title of one
of the four documentary films by Shabnam Virmani, collectively called Journeys
with Kabir.
18. Bhajan: Maharam hove soī lakh pāve, aisā deśh hamaṛā.
19. Bhajan: Nirbhay nirguṇ, translated and discussed in Hess 2009a, 39–40 and 88.
20. Bhajan: Laharī anahad uṭhe ghaṭ bhītar, also referenced in the Introduction.
21. The nād(a) is discussed in many Sanskrit and vernacular sources related to yoga,
philosophy, and music.
22. The guru—very important in Kabir poetry and nirguṇ religiosity—will be
discussed in chapter 4. Here we can note an ambiguity that tends to get lost
amid the literal-mindedness of guru-bhakti in Indian tradition generally and
in the Kabir Panth particularly. In poetry attributed to Kabir, the guru can
be a human being to whom one owes profound reverence for revealing the
path to liberation; or it can be the divine presence within oneself. If asked,
Prahladji usually emphasizes the guru within. In one of my favorite old sto-
ries, a man named Gayabanand said he had three gurus: Satguru Kabir, his
initiating guru in the Kabir Panth, and the guru in his own heart (Hess and
Singh 2002, 36). Incapable or deceitful gurus also appear as objects of satire
in the poetry.
23. A version of this poem was included in Kshitimohan Sen’s 1910–11 collection of
Kabir poetry, which was the source of Rabindranath Tagore’s 1917 English col-
lection 100 Songs of Kabir. These 100 poems (plus others from the Sen volumes,
a total of 256) are given in Hindi in the appendix to Hazariprasad Dvivedi’s Kabīr;
the poem under discussion is no. 8 (p. 241). In that version the Hindi for “in
this body” is is ghaṭ antar instead of yā ghaṭ bhītar, and the repeated refrain sung
in Malwa—”Who can know this? The one who knows! / Without a teacher, the
world is blind”—is not present.
24. Bhajan: Guru sam dātā koī nahīṇ.
25. For example, the Kabir, Dadu, and Raidasi Panths.
26. In his study of “Prahlad the Pious Demon,” Lorenzen (1996, 31) argues that
the author(s) of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, a major Sanskrit text revered by
Vaishnav/Krishnaite sampradāys, “strongly support the Brahmanic ideology of
varṇaśhramadharma. Above all, the text stresses the necessity of offering respect
and charity to the Brahmins. The final five discourses . . . of book seven . . . mainly
consist of a lengthy dialogue between Nārada and Yudhiṣthira on the virtues of
varṇāśhramadharma. Jan Gopal’s Prahilād charitra, on the other hand, promotes
the more egalitarian and generally anti-Brahmin ideology commonly found in
nirguṇī texts.”
27. There have been recent programs to train women priests, and there are cer-
tain special circumstances in which non-Brahmin priests serve, but these rare
exceptions prove the rule. See, for example, an article in The Hindu, a national
English newspaper, published on May 23, 2014, titled “Pandharpur Temple
Allows Women, Men of All Castes as Priests”: http://www.thehindu.com/news/
national/other-states/pandharpur-temple-allows-women-men-of-all-castes-as-
priests/article6038635.ece?homepage=true.
28. The Hindi word kāī means rust, moss, scum, mold, verdigris, indicating some
foreign substance that accumulates on the surface of a purer substance because
of its exposure to other materials and circumstances. “Scum” isn’t a perfect

translation, but I don’t have a better one.
29. They lack mukti presumably because they (especially Viṣhṇu with his avatars)
keep reappearing in new forms, going round in the cycles of birth and death.
30. A beautiful dialogue in this regard occurs in Virmani 2008a, a scene where
Prahladji is in a train traveling to Banaras.
31. On the other hand, Advaita Vedanta is philosophically entirely nirguṇ, yet the
institutions founded by Shankara are relentlessly casteist, restricted to Brahmins.
The conditions under which caste ideology and oppression develop are much
more complicated than one’s theological orientation. Yet in the specific case of
vernacular nirguṇ bhakti, we can observe the historical preference of nirguṇ tra-
ditions by oppressed castes for the reasons we have discussed.
32. Bhajan: Jāo nugurī kāyā.
33. Relating to all the family members in the three households has been an impor-
tant part of my life in Lunyakhedi, so I would like to mention at least in a note
who they are (as of 2015). In Ambaram’s and Kamla’s house live their two sons,
two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren. Ashok and Sumitra have two sons,
Mithun and Arjun, and a daughter, Rachna. Mithun married at seventeen; his
fifteen-year-old wife didn’t come to live there at first, but they fixed up a little
room for the young couple. She moved in about two years later and now has two
children. Rachna was twelve when I first came in 2002. In 2010 she got married
and moved to her husband’s village. Prahladji and Shantiji also have two sons
and a daughter. The daughter, Sona, lives with her husband, but often comes
to her natal home with her daughter and son. The older son Ajay and his wife
Sangita have two boys. They lived in Lunyakhedi for most of the time I’ve known
them, but in 2012 shifted to a flat in Indore, with frequent visits to the village.
Their main reason for the move was to get better education for their sons. The
younger son Vijay got married along with his cousin Mithun, in 2005; Vijay
and Seema have a son and daughter. Prahladji’s elderly father lived in the main
house but frequently trudged in and out of the others, until his passing in 2014.
Another boy, Shri, the son of Prahlad’s sister Gita, lived in Lunyakhedi with his
Uncle Ashok and Aunt Sumitra for most of his life.
34. For a description of these events by Prahladji’s wife Shantiji, see chapter 4.
35. Taken from Shabnam’s footage, though it does not appear in any of the finished
films.
36. Details on what the panjā said are in c hapter 7.
37. For more on Syag-bhāī, see chapters 6 and 8.
38. One of Shabnam’s four feature-length documentary films in the Journeys with
Kabir series features Prahladji and me and focuses on the cross-cultural reach of
Kabir’s voice. It is entitled Chalo hamāṝa des/Come to My Country.
39. This is a formal ritual of the Kabir Panth, in which Prahladji was at that time
serving as a mahant—guru and ritual authority. Chapter 7 tells the story of his
mahantship and all the issues it raised.
40. This DVD as well as all the documentary films and other media produced
by the Bangalore-based project can be acquired through the website www.
kabirproject.org.
C h a p t er 2
1. Aditya Behl was an astoundingly creative scholar and friend whose death in 2009
at the age of forty-three left many of us grief-stricken.
2. The wonderful work of Christian Novetzke (2008) on orality, literacy, perfor-
mance, and authorship in the tradition of the Marathi bhakti poet Namdev is
highly relevant and recommended—especially chaps. 2 and 3.
3. On the question of Kabir’s (il)literacy, see Introduction, n. 5.
4. See Hawley 2005, 194–207, for a detailed study of how the body of poetry attrib-
uted to Surdas grew from century to century, in layers traceable through dated
manuscripts. In the same volume (24–47), Hawley explains how newer com-
positions become linked with the names of older poets. All of the processes
mentioned here are observable in today’s oral performances and will be demon-
strated in this chapter.
5. See c hapter 3 for a detailed account of important Kabir manuscripts.
6. Hess 1987b; Vaudeville 1993; Callewaert 2000; Dharwadker 2003, Introduction;
Agrawal 2009a, chap. 4; Hawley 2005, 279–304.
7. Callewaert and Lath (1989, 55–118) provide a valuable essay called “Musicians
and Scribes.” They cite evidence in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century texts of the
widespread practice and importance of singing bhajan/kirtan in bhakti sects
and wider cultures, and they closely examine written sources for evidence of
oral transmission. Much of their attention goes to signs of music observable
in written texts (raga categories and metrical features that would have been
expressed as musical rhythms). They also note indications of how texts were
altered in singing. Comparing written versions, they show that refrain and sig-
nature lines were easily portable, as I have noted in this chapter with examples
from performance. The common addition of “fillers” like re bhāī and other short
phrases are seen in variants, along with changes in stanza order, dropping of
stanzas, lines, or half-lines, or substitution of those units. Their observations of
such textual dynamism are based on written sources, while mine are based on
live performances.
8. Dinesh Sharma appears prominently in c hapter 6, which also explains how the
NGO Eklavya collected many hundreds of song texts from singing groups in
the area.
9. Later in this chapter Prahladji speaks of the wholesale substitution, in a sec-

tarian collection, of “Kabir says to Dharamdas” for more common forms of
“Kabir says.” I also note the appearance of a famous Kabir refrain, Man lāgo
mero yār fakiri meṇ, in a song sung by Muralala of Kutch with the signature line
of Mirabai. The refrain Koi jānega jananahār, in the Malwa Kabir bhajan Is ghaṭ
antar, turns up in a verse by the Rajasthani Niranjani Panth sant Turasīdās (cited
in Baid 2012, 2). This footnote could turn into a very long catalog.
10. The oldest notebook gives a nice glimpse of Prahladji’s history, recording the
moment when his focus switched from studying economics to singing and col-
lecting bhajans. At the beginning, I see the heading ECONOMICS in English
capital letters. He studied economics for his BA. “Adam Smith: Economics is
the science of wealth” is written in English, then the same thing in Hindi. He
lists prominent economists including J. B. Say, J. A. Mill, Carlyle, Ruskin, Prof.
Lannen, on and on, with one Indian name, Prof. J. K. Mehta. The next sec-
tion, “Characteristics of wants: Human wants are unlimited,” is in English and
Hindi. There follow notes on consumption, land, productivity, consumer’s sur-
plus, decentralization of industries, and mobility of labor. English words appear
less and less. Then suddenly the bhajans start. There is no return to economics.
Near the beginning of the bhajans a date is recorded: 28 Aug. 1977.
11. The Kabir bhajan is well known. Each line begins with ye/yoṇ sansār—this world
(of birth and death)—and continues with images of impermanence. The verses
in Prahladji’s notebook were: ye sansār os kā motī, dhūp paḍe uḍ jānā re / ye sansār
hāṭ kā melā, saudā kar ghar jānā re / ye sansār ūnḍā kuā, rapaṭ rapaṭ mar jānā re /
ye sansār bor kā jala, ulajh ulajh mar jānā re.
12. For more on the work of Lord and other twentieth-century scholars of oral texts,
see chapter 5.
13. A full translation of the song appears in chapter 1.
14. Another switch between two words that sound similar but have different mean-
ings is in the song that I translate as “In this body” (see c hapter 4). Prahladji
sings in the first stanza: yā ghaṭ bhītar ban aur bastī, yāhī meṇ jhāḍ pahāḍā/ yā
ghaṭ bhītar bāg bagīchā, yāhī meṇ sinchanahārā.” The last word means one who
waters, referring to the gardens and groves in the verse. In Shubha Mudgal’s
sung version, the last word is sirjanahārā, meaning the creator, the one who
made the gardens and groves. They also have different words in the repeated
phrase at the beginning of all the lines: yā ghaṭ bhītar in one, is ghaṭ antar in
the other. But these variants have exactly the same meaning and are metrically
equivalent.
15. Callewaert and Lath contrast the “freezing” effect of strict canonization in the
Ādi Granth’s sphere of influence with the continuing vitality of oral tradition
elsewhere: “Unlike the case for the Sikh tradition, the manuscript tradition in
Rajasthan does not seem to have stopped the development of the oral tradition.
The oral tradition in Rajasthan has remained dynamic and has continued to be
a vital source for Santa songs and sayings, even after a rich manuscript tradition
was established. The two traditions have run parallel up to the present day. The
oral traditions have remained alive and active, till perhaps two generations ago,
adding to and modifying earlier material” (1989, 97). But why would they sug-
gest that the dynamic oral tradition ended two generations ago? I would refute
that claim, as evidenced in this chapter.
16. In a famous essay titled “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three
Thoughts on Translation,” A. K. Ramanujan says: “One may . . . say that the cul-
tural area in which Ramayanas are endemic has a pool of signifiers (like a gene
pool), signifiers that include plots, characters, names, geography, incidents, and
relationships.” These signifiers continuously move among oral, written, and
performance traditions (Ramanujan 1999, 46).
17. The cup filled with the name— / Seeker, drink it fearlessly. / I found my true
guru today. / My awareness has climbed to the sky. // In the bee’s cave, my lord
sits, / The bee is buzzing there, / The seeker takes an inward posture, It fills to
the brim. // With no clouds / Lighting strikes / An unbounded light / Bursts into
showers.
18. On these numbers see chapter 4.
19. The popularity of this song is probably related to its performance in a 1950 Hindi
film, Jogan, with Nargis and Dilip Kumar.
20. In Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture (2010), Orsini takes
us beyond the entrenched categories of Hindi and Urdu by showing his-
torically how and why these categories were constructed and also showing
the dynamic multilingual and multicultural worlds in which people of the
fourteenth through eighteenth centuries actually lived. In an earlier arti-
cle she presents an idea that resonates with my “ecoregions” but is more
elaborated: “[W]‌e need new maps that will include Hindi, Urdu, Persian
and Apabhramsa. We need historico-geographical maps, starting from the
Sultanate period, which go beyond Delhi and take into account regional king-
doms and the network of cities and the qasbas of Avadh and Bihar. We also
need topologies that will map the spaces of literary production and consump-
tion, in order to note the contiguity or distance between literary actors and
to move beyond impressionistic and anecdotal evidence of ‘cultural contact’
between writers and performers of different traditions. Finally, we need a map
of literary genres” (Orsini 2005, 397). Yet another article gives more empha-
sis to oral-performative modes: “Fifteenth-century Hindavi literature consists
mainly of songs, doha couplets and kathas, narratives. Some were indeed pro-
duced at regional or even smaller courts, but others in the open ‘Bhakti public
sphere’ (Agrawal) or towns and villages. Songs (and singer-composers . . .)
were highly prized and at the centre of courtly performances, as well as of
devotional practices and temples. Both kathas, songs and dohas were genres
practiced by a range of different poets—Naths, Sants, Sufis, Jains, bhakha and
sometimes also Persian court poets—and the high degree of intertextuality in

terms of titles, names, tropes and images shows that they circulated among
all these domains, evidence of a general intelligibility of genres and aesthet-
ics” (Orsini 2012, 238). Orsini cites Nalini Delvoye’s work on music in the
Sultanate period and later: “[Delvoye] has done much to show precisely how
these different locations—both courtly and religious—were connected, and
how singers, songs and musical aesthetics circulated between Sufi sama’ ses-
sions, courtly mehfils and sabhas, temple functions and devotional gatherings”
(Orsini 2012, 240).
21. Kumarji also sings gaṛh instead of ghar, which has an entirely different mean-
ing. Prahladji’s son Ajay told me that once his father’s mandalī was singing this
bhajan at the Shīlnāth dhūnī (a Nath Panth center in Dewas, described later in
this chapter), and the gathered Nath Panthis got quite angry when they heard
Kabir’s signature line at the end. Besides being obviously wrong in their view,
this constituted disrespect to their revered founder.
22. The two texts are unmistakably the “same” song, with the refrain “I’m afraid of
that day,” but they contain fascinating differences. For Kumar Gandharva’s ver-
sion, see Hess 2009a, 112–13. Muralala’s performance of the song was posted on
YouTube by the Kabir Project, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcI_6ToTuh
Y&feature=plcp>.
23. Poems attributed to the Sikh gurus almost never come up. The one prominent
exception is Sakal haṃs meṇ rām virāje, a song with Nanak’s signature that
Prahladji and other Malwa friends sing often.
24. Some scholars assert that Dharamdas actually lived much later. “Raghavdas’s
Bhaktamāl . . . was composed in the early years of the eighteenth century,
that is, some hundred years after the establishment of Dharamdas’s Kabir
Panth. . . . Raghavdas counts Dharamdas as one of Kabir’s nine direct dis-
ciples, but Dharamdas’s lifetime was actually about a century after Kabir’s”
(Agrawal 2009a, 164–65).
25. The best-known scholar to advance this view, influencing many later thinkers, is
Hazariprasad Dvivedi (1971[1942]).
26. Henry 1991, 160–88; Henry 1995; D. Gold 1999, 2002; D. Gold and A. G. Gold
1984. A lovely short film by Anal Shah shows a singer of this tradition sing-
ing in the lanes of Varanasi: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzB3c-xdOyk>
(uploaded 2008, accessed 2012).
27. For a fuller description of Shilnath, his published bhajan collection, and the
institution honoring him in Dewas, see Hess 2009a, 19–23. Virmani’s film Koī
suntā hai includes discussion of Kumarji’s visits to the Shilnath ashram and brief
footage of the place.
28. The story, briefly told in Hess 2009a, 21, is movingly recounted by Madhup
Mudgal in the film by Virmani (2008c) and transcribed in chapter 3, p. 138–39.
29. Hess and Singh 2002 contains an essay by Hess on this genre, “Upside-down
Language” (135–61).
30. For details on this collection see Hess 2009a, 19–23.
31. Prahladji got this song from Gujarati singer Hemant Chauhan, whom he
admires greatly and sometimes calls his “ideal”(ādarśh). Hemantji sings ganapati
in the first verse, which PT changes to satguru. PT retains the homage to Sharda
(Sarasvati), but he explains the name to me in a way that effaces the icon of
the Hindu goddess of learning and the arts, wife of Brahma. According to him,
Sarasvati’s name indicates that she is the goddess of svar—voice or sound in rela-
tion to music.
32. In one reading nārī is woman and sukamna means lovely, delicate, happy,
delighted. The translation “lovely spouse” reflects this meaning, as nārī often
means wife as well as woman. In another combination, nāḍī is channel or nerve,
a yogic term for the channels in the subtle body through which energy or breath
courses. Sukamnā then is suṣhumnā, the central channel running along the spi-
nal cord. Through spiritual exercises the yogi attempts to direct the breath into
the central channel instead of the normal, repetitively cycling right and left chan-
nels. The word for this central channel, suṣhumnā, is of feminine gender. The
energy that rises through the suṣhumnā is kunḍalinī, also understood as female.
33. The song was “Aisī mhārī prīt,” which Shabnam sang on her own first CD
set. The chāap she found incongruous was one that was familiar to her from
“Saudāgīr ab kyoṇ bhūlyo jaī.”
34. Papihā or cuckoo: a conventional figure in love poetry. She adores the drops of
water that fall only during the nakśatra or asterism of svāti, a constellation of
stars in the moon’s path that occurs for a very short time each year. She refuses
to drink any other water. No thirst will drive her to touch any water but the drops
of svāti. Her cry, “piyā, piyā,” sounds like the word for “beloved.”
35. A full translation with discussion is in c hapter 5.
36. They have been screened on countless occasions in India, at least a few times in
Pakistan, and in a number of other countries. Kabir festivals have blossomed in
many cities, featuring live performances and film screenings. Some of the films
have been shown on NDTV, a major cable channel, or made available on the
internet.
37. My discussion with Vijay went deeper, revealing that he not only knew the
songs popularized by Prahladji’s cassettes but also was familiar with the nirguṇ
theology and spirituality that are espoused by sects like the Kabir Panth and
Radhasoami, and that seem to have great influence among people of low-caste
status. He talked about the power of the Name. I asked if he also worshiped
Ram and Krishna. He said yes, but he considered them to be holy persons, not
Bhagavan (God). Using three names for the one he regarded as supreme, he
said that Niranjan-Satyapurush-Mahakal was far above them. If you practice
the name in every breath, through the guru’s grace, you may experience that.
I asked if he also worshiped Devi. He said, “Yes, Devi is Yogamaya who cre-
ated this whole universe. She created Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh. Originally there
was shūnya (emptiness). Out of shūnya she appeared, just like that, by herself.
Satyapurush is shūnya (empty), nirākār (formless)—the absolute highest.”
38. See discussion of the contempt in which upper-caste people had held the tambūrā,
and how that had changed, in c hapter 1. This conversation is transcribed from
Shabnam’s film Kabīrā khaḍa bāzār meṇ/In the Market Stands Kabir. Also see
reference to the tambūrā in the description of the mandalī’s village sendoff for
London in chapter 1.
39. Jack Hawley suggests that I shouldn’t underestimate the amazing speed with
which Kabir traveled via urban networks even in the sixteenth century. Personal
communication, February 2012.
40. In 2013, an internet search for a particular song took me to a site called freeb-
hajans.com. The first item in the Google search results was a video of Shabnam
singing Man mast huā phir kyā bole—and guess where? At my house in Berkeley,
California, in 2009, with Prahladji and the mandalī accompanying, and a
room full of my family and friends (http://www.freebhajans.com/category/
kabir-amritvani).
41. A similar process appears to be underway with digital media as discussed,
for example, in Tim Wu’s 2011 book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of
Information Empires. “Although the Internet has created a world of openness and
access unprecedented in human history, Wu is quick to point out that the early
phases of telephony, film, and radio offered similar opportunities for the hob-
byist, inventor, and creative individual, only to be centralized and controlled by
corporate interests, monopolized, broken into smaller entities, and then recon-
solidated. Wu calls this the Cycle, and nowhere is it more exemplary than in the
telecommunications industry. The question Wu raises is whether the Internet is
different, or whether we are merely in the early open phase of a technology that
is to be usurped and controlled by profiteering interests” (Booklist review, cited
on amazon.com web page for Tim Wu’s book, accessed July 3, 2014).
42. The ominous and antidemocratic potential of the internet is increasingly
under scrutiny, for instance in Robert W. McChesney’s Digital Disconnect: How
Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy (New Press, 2013). In sum-
mer 2013, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about secret govern-
ment collection of vast amounts of information from our daily internet lives, a
spate of articles addressed the end of the open internet. The prospects were defi-
nitely not democratic. One of many such commentaries: “Snowden’s remark-
able decision and the various details that have emerged about the NSA’s massive
program to capture and store data off the Internet and, reportedly, from serv-
ers run by Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and others mark a watershed
moment. I, and many others, have posted about this type of surveillance sce-
nario before, but a young NSA contractor fleeing the United States for Hong
Kong to expose the reality and scale of the U.S. government’s eavesdropping is
a chilling, worldwide wake-up call about our rights in an increasingly connected
world. . . . there seems to be enough evidence to bear out what I and many others
have been pointing out for years: that the technology to establish widespread,
constant surveillance finally exists, and we are in danger of exactly the type of
police-state scenario that many are starting to fear in light of revelations about
PRISM.” Paul Venezia, June 17, 2013, http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/
the-end-of-the-open-internet-we-know-it-220707.
C h a p t er 3
1. This is sākhī 74 in the Bījak (S. Singh 1972, 154), translated in Hess and Singh
2002, 96–97. A slightly different translation is given here.
2. Influential early articles in the unfolding of postcolonial and deconstructionist
theory include Barthes 1978 [1967], “The Death of the Author”; and Foucault
1977 [1969], “What Is an Author?”
3. John Stratton Hawley’s 1988 article “Author and Authority in the Bhakti Poetry
of North India” (reprinted as “Author and Authority” in Hawley 2005, and sum-
marized in Hawley 2009, 24–28) was an early and perspicacious view of the
author question in the Indian bhakti context. See also Novetzke 2008, chap. 2.
4. A song about the train and rail ticket is sung by Kabir singers in Malwa, but
attributed to a different poet, Ishwardas.
5. In an early article, I told a story about how I discovered that there was no over-
lap at all between the Bījak, the singular holy book of the Kabir Chaura branch
of the Kabir Panth, and the Śhabdāvalī, a collection of popular bhajans pub-
lished by the Kabīr Chaurā Math in Varanasi (Hess 1987b, 118). David Lorenzen
addresses this gap in “Kabir’s Most Popular Songs” (Lorenzen 1996, 205–24).
6. The in-person interview was tape-recorded at the Kabir Chaura Math, Varanasi.
This portion is translated from Hindi. The same criteria are given in the pref-
ace to Shastri 1998, iv. Further in the preface to that volume, Shastri says they
drew from the Guru Granth Sāhib, Rajjab’s Sarvāngī, and a text from the Nagari
Pracharini Sabha attributed to Sevadas. In addition he traveled far and wide hear-
ing songs. “Traveling across regions, hearing the songs of Kabir from the mouths
of people, I was plunged into a bottomless sea of utterances. Many men could go
on all night singing Kabir. I couldn’t know what they had composed themselves
and what was really by Kabir. . . . I went to the tribal areas of Maharashtra, Gujarat,
and Bihar. When I asked them to sing bhajans, they sang in a language I couldn’t
understand. All I could pick up was ‘kahe kabīr suno bhāī sādhu.’ Beyond that
I had no idea what they were saying.” Noticing that the tribal people did not sing
Surdas, Mirabai, or Tulsidas, but they did sing Kabir, he speculated that Dalits,
Adivasis, and people of “backward castes” felt that Kabir’s words touched their
lives more closely than those of other major poets (Shastri 1998, iv).
7. The ghazal is an Urdu poetic form, popular in sung as well as recited perfor-
mance, with particular patterns of rhyme and meter that are not typical of Kabir
bhajans. This claimed Kabir poem partakes of the meter and rhyme forms of the
ghazal.
8. The lyrics and a scratchy recording of Begum Akhtar are available at http://www.
hindigeetmala.com/song/vo_jo_ham_men_tum.htm (accessed Aug. 2013).
9. http://www.bori.ac.in/mahabharata_project.html.
10. I have discussed the idea of mapping Kabir in chapter 2, referring to Francesca
Orsini’s proposals for mapping Hindi-Urdu literature.
11. As this book was in production, in August 2014, I attended a gathering of schol-
ars who work on early Hindi texts. There I realized that a significant new name
should be added to my list: the Czech scholar Jaroslav Strnad. He has worked on
what may be the earliest verifiable Rajasthani manuscript that has a large num-
ber of Kabir compositions. His 2013 book is entitled Morphology and Syntax of
Old Hindi: Edition and Analysis of One Hundred Kabir Vani Poems from Rajasthan.
Though the title and the bulk of the book are concerned with linguistic analy-
sis, Strnad has also done the full work of a textual editor. Part one is “Edition
of the Pads,” with minute attention to the kinds of decisions a textual editor
must make.
12. A number of typographical errors and other points of confusion have been
reported, and Callewaert is in the process of preparing a corrected edition.
13. If only for poetic resonance, I cite a well-known couplet recorded in both the
Bījak and the Kabīr Granthāvalī. This is Bījak sakhī 194:
bolī hamārī purv kī, hame lakhe nahi koy / hamko to soī lakhe, dhur purab
kā hoy.
“My speech is of the east, no one understands me. / Only that one understands
me, who is totally from the east.”
14. I have gone no farther than a few casual conversations with other schol-
ars on this topic. At a workshop on early Hindi literature in Bulgaria in
July–August 2014, some of the luminaries in the field agreed that the pleth-
ora of good early manuscripts in Rajasthan could be attributed to several
factors including: the influence of the Jains, who revered books and had a
tradition of establishing libraries; the relatively stable Rajput courts with
their interest in preserving cultural artifacts; and the dry climate. In the East
the climate was much worse, leading to rot and white ants destroying manu-
scripts. Courts in the East were less stable. The Jain influence was absent.
Conversation partners on that occasion included the very knowledgeable
Monika Horstmann, Imre Bagha, and Kenneth Bryant. Historian William
Pinch, in an earlier correspondence, made similar suggestions. In an email
on Oct. 4, 2012, he said:
“I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the greater stability, size, and longevity
of the courts in the western areas, especially Jaipur/Ajmer, Jodhpur, Orchha,
etc., and the emergence of a manuscript tradition and interest in sant/bhakta
hagiography (Nabhadas etc.) connected to those courts. The eastern side was
also subject to greater political vagaries, what with the rise of the Company.
Another factor was the patronage that the more ‘egalitarian’ sampraday
like the Dadu Panthis and Nanakshahis received from the western courts.
One doesn’t, I think, see that kind of patronage in the east, though surely
there must have been some. The big and medium-sized eastern states, like
Darbhanga, Dumraon, Ramnagar, Bettia, Hathwa, Tekari raj, would have had
libraries, but many of them were frittered away during the ’70s or caught up
in litigation. . . . And no doubt they preferred more in the way of brahmini-
cal, Sanskrit mss. Still, none of this seems satisfying. Perhaps it has to do
with the fact that Bhumihar Brahmans and Maithili Brahmans dominated the
eastern courts, whereas Rajputs ruled in the west—and the latter were more
keen on patronizing the newer sampraday.”
Another fruitful line of research may be among sects that have been
neglected so far by scholars. Tyler Williams has recently completed a Columbia
University dissertation on the Niranjani Panth of Rajasthan. Closely examin-
ing manuscripts of sant poetry, Williams is turning up valuable new knowledge
about their contents and histories. This panth is still in western India. Will some-
one bring forth new discoveries from the East?
Francesca Orsini, in an email exchange, suggests looking into the geogra-
phy “of maths, libraries, gaddis,” as well as the social composition of sects in the
eastern Hindi region: “I would be very interested in the early history of the Kabir
panth and their attitude towards writing and collecting books, and to the math (if
there is one) and family of Malukdas. The Dadu panthis and Sikhs were clearly
very much into pothis and granths, and Sufis, also in the east. But in the east,
what was the social composition and investment in writing of the Sants and their
successors (and followers)?” (email, Sept. 1, 2013).
15. Even that limited claim is subject to doubt. As Purushottam Agrawal says (2009a,
218), the fact that a text doesn’t appear in an early dated manuscript doesn’t
prove that it didn’t exist at an early date.
16. See Callewaert 2000, 75 for details of the four groups and star-distribution. See
also Dharwadker 2003, 33–41 and Hawley 2005, 194–207 for further light on
early “cores” and expanding “complete works.”
17. Agrawal (2009a, 204–5) offers a cogent discussion of the Fatehpur manuscript.
18. For instance, Imre Bangha’s website on the Kavātāvalī critical edition project,
http://tulsidas.orient.ox.ac.uk/ (accessed July 2014).
19. No examples are mentioned. It would be helpful to see examples of how Kabir
poems in Dadu Panthi manuscripts go against teachings of the panth.
20. This is a reference to the sākhī that begins kaṭuk shabda kabīr ke, “Kabir’s harsh
words,” cited in full in c hapter 6.
21. Particularly relevant is Guru Amardas, who served as the third Sikh guru from
1552 to 1574. Gurinder Singh Mann (2001) has shown in chapter 7 of The Making
of Sikh Scripture that Guru Amardas was most likely responsible for adding the
bhagat bāṇī, including Kabir, to the developing text that would become the Ādi
Granth.
22. If we compare the narrower collection of Callewaert’s starred poems to the
Granthāvalī, the overlap may be even closer than the above numbers show. This
would support Agrawal’s view that the Granthāvalī is the best single “core” text
(or at least one of the best), and it would also speak well for Callewaert’s method.
23. A note from the field of Buddhist manuscript studies sets the right tone for
evaluating Kabir manuscripts as well. In an online article about the search for
an authentic Buddhist canon, Linda Heumann quotes Oskar von Hinüber, a Pali
scholar: “Nobody holds the view of an original canon anymore.” Paul Harrison
of Stanford University elaborates: “If everything just proceeds in its own vertical
line, and there is no crossways influence, that is fine; you know where you are.
But once things start flowing horizontally, you get a real mess. Having some-
thing old, of course, is valuable because you are more likely to be closer to an
earlier form. But notice I’m careful to say now ‘an earlier form’ and not ‘the
earliest form.’ A first-century B.C.E. [Gandhari] manuscript is going to give you
a better guide to an earlier form than an 18th-century Sri Lankan copy will. But
that’s not an absolute guarantee, just a slightly better one” (http://www.douban.
com/group/topic/22375578/, accessed Sept. 2011).
24. This passage follows the translation in Virmani 2008f, 9, cited in Agrawal
2009a, 218.
25. Agrawal coined the term uparachnā here, and I made up an English term to
translate it.
26. On the matter of category formation I can never forget Borges’s great fabrica-
tion of the Chinese encyclopedia, to which I and many others have been intro-
duced through the preface to Foucault’s The Order of Things: An Archaeology of
the Human Sciences: “This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of
the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of
my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our
geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which
we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continu-
ing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction
between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese ency-
clopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to
the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous,
(g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innu-
merable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having
just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.’ In the
wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the
thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another
system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of think-
ing that. But what is it impossible to think, and what kind of impossibility are we
faced with here?” (Foucault 1994, xv).
27. John Keats’s letter to George and Tom Keats, 27 December 1817. http://www.
poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237836?page=2.
28. From film footage in the Kabir Project archive.
29. This is a slightly edited version of a transcript of the interview. I am grateful to
Chintan Girish Modi for sending me the transcript and pointing out this passage.
30. Conversation on July 16, 2005.
31. Tiwari retired in 2011; I haven’t been able to find out the exact date when his
directorship began.
32. This interview is preserved in Shabnam Virmani’s collection of footage though it
was not used in any of her documentary films.
33. Tijan-bāī is a brilliant performer of Mahābhārata stories in a vernacular perfor-
mance genre called panḍvāṇī.
34. Here we must cite a well-known poem of Kabir:
The pandits’ pedantries are lies.

If saying Ram gave liberation
saying candy made your mouth sweet
saying fire burned your feet,
saying water quenched your thirst,
saying food banished hunger,
the whole world would be free.
(For a translation of the whole poem, see Hess and Singh 2002, 54.)
35. Bhajan: Har har mārūngā.
36. I first met Kumarji’s family—his wife Vasundhara, daughter Kalapini, and grand-
son Bhuvan—in Dewas in 2002. They added another instance to the well-known
stories of Kumarji’s frequent visits to the Shilnath dhūnī singing circles and his
first encounter with Suntā hai guru gyānī through the voice of a wandering yogi.
An old unlettered woman lived on the “hill of Devi” in Dewas, where Kumarji
and his family also lived. He called her Mirabai and used to invite her home and
listen to her sing. The family brought her to meet me one day. I still have a cas-
sette of her singing. She is no longer alive.
37. Kumarji said he didn’t make up the melodies he composed but found them
present in the poetry (Hess 2009a, 23). However, he also relied a great deal on
Shilnath’s printed collection for the texts he sang (Hess 2009a, 21–23).
38. After reflecting on these statements by Tiwari, I want to ask him if he would ever
mark a poem as inauthentic, not aligned with Kabir’s truth. If so, what examples
would he give? What does he think of what Shabnam has called “obvious cor-
ruptions” in the oral tradition? For example, the song Dhanya kabīr, recorded
by Prahladji and group, recites as fact the miraculous birth of Kabir on a lotus
and includes modern stereotypes of violent enemies against whom true dharma
must be protected.
39. Salomon 1996; Knight 2011; Snodgrass 2006.
40. I am reminded of V. Raghavan’s 1966 The Great Integrators: The Saint-Singers of
India. Raghavan, a renowned Sanskritist, traced many similes, extended meta-
phors, and themes in their frequent appearances among bhakti poets all over
India, in every major language. He also showed how some of these common
tropes can be traced all the way back to the Upaniṣads. Though his book was
clearly oriented toward India’s postindependence preoccupation with national
integration, and though he spoke of a unitary “bhakti movement” no longer
granted by scholars, he was right in observing the very widespread sharing of
extended metaphors and other patterns of imagery and symbolism.
41. My translation of the stanza on Kabir, chappay 60 in Nābhadas’s Bhaktamāl
[Garland of Devotees], ed. S. B. Rupkala, Lucknow, 1962.
42. bachāyā hindū dharma ko hinsakoṇ se: He [Kabir] saved the Hindu religion from
its violent (opponents).
43. On the story of his relationship with the Panth, see c hapter 7; and Virmani 2008b.
44. In 2010, an undergraduate student majoring in computer science, Nicelio
Sanchez-Luege, took a class with me. Nicelio did a statistical study using trans-
lations of Kabir poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Robert Bly, and me. A chart
with colored dots representing statistical findings on the three translators sug-
gested to me the power of such visual patterns to reveal different ways of seeing.
He concluded in his unpublished course paper: “The stated goal of the project
was to verify whether Kabirʼs poems were suitable for statistical analysis, and
whether translator was a statistically significant variable in PCA. Kabirʼs poetry
is certainly apt for statistical analysis. Despite the projectʼs naïve word-count
method (using all words), PCA showed clear stratification according to transla-
tor. The statistical significance of the results makes this project a suitable pro-
totype for larger-scale projects. Computational statistics allows for staggering
amounts of data, thus a study including every translated Kabir poem is plausible
from a computational perspective. In addition to more data, future studies may
add more variables to further explore correlations in the data. The emergence
of translator as a significant factor using such simple methods warrants further
investigation into the relationship between translator and poem. A more sophis-
ticated study would include variables such as the region of the original text, the
year it was printed, and who transcribed it. Each translator may have implicit
bias in any of these variables. Such a study could add an arbitrary amount of
variables to analyze Kabirʼs poetry from different cultural, regional, and linguis-
tic perspectives.”
An updated indication of the possibilities of computer analysis of Kabir texts
comes from my colleague and collaborator Jaroslav Strnad, whose work on manu-
scripts has been discussed earlier in this chapter. “[A proposed] initiative called
ENIAT (Early New Indo-Aryan Texts) . . . [aims] to offer electronic versions of texts
suitable for quantitative processing by way of word lists, concordances, keywords
etc. (sophisticated software for these tasks already exists and is easily available).
When I finished the typing of sākhīs into my computer it was quite easy to convert . . .
into ASCII Latin alphabet which can be comfortably searched even by the most
ordinary tools incorporated into the MS Word, for example. Searching for particu-
lar words and phrases is no problem now” (email, Feb. 7, 2015).
C h a p t er 4
1. Bhajan: Kaī ḍhūnḍhtī phiro mhārī helī.

2. According to one Kabir Panthi book that Prahladji showed me, pṛithvī (earth)
is related to haḍḍī, mās, tvachā, lobh, raktavāhiyā; jal (water) to kaph, pitt, rakt,
prasved, vīrya; agni (fire) to ālasya, janhai, nidra, kshadha, tṛiṣha; vāyu (wind) to
śhakti prayog, dhāvan, prasāraṇ, sakuchan, sharīrik vṛiddhi; akāśh (space/ether) to
kām, krodh, lobh, moh, ahaṃkār.
3. The male and female snakes appear in Gyān kī jaḍiyāṇ, the deer in Thane gam nī
rākhī bhāī, to gayā khet sab khāī.
4. Why are the 5 male, the 25 female? My first guess is that women are generally
understood as more troublesome than men in the realm of spiritual endeavor,
and more linked to materiality. So the larger class of problems related to material
existence would be female. Some say that it’s simply a matter of grammatical
gender: the words for “element” (mahābhūt) and “sense” (indriyā) are masculine,
the word for “process of nature” (prakṛiti) feminine.
5. See c hapter 3 for discussion of the Granthāvalī edited by Shyamsundar Das, pub-
lished in 1928, and regarded by Purushottam Agrawal as the most reliable of all
Kabir manuscripts.
6. The remaining categories as listed in Das 1970 [1928]: ras, lāmbi, jarṇā, hairān,
lai, nihakarmī pativratā, chitāvaṇī, man, sūṣhim mārag, sūṣhim janam, māyā,
chāṇak, karaṇī binā kathnī, kathaṇī binā karaṇī, kāmī nar, sahaj, sānch, bhram
vidhauṃṣhaṇ, bheṣh, kusangati, sangati, asādh, sādh, sādh sākhībhūt, sādh mahimā,
madhi, sāṛā grāhī, vichār, upadeśh, besās, pīv pichhāṇan, birkatāī, samrathāī, kusabad,
sabad, jīvan mritak, chit kapaṭī, gurusiṣh herā, het prīti saneh, sūrā tan, kāl, sajīvani,
apāriṣh, pāriṣh, upajaṇi, dayā nirabairatā, sundari, kastūriyaṇ mṛig, nindyā, niguṇā,
bīnatī, sākhībhūt, belī, abihaḍ.
7. See chapter 3, n. 26.
8. These and all otherwise unidentified lines from poetry are unpublished texts
that I have learned solely from oral performance—the songs of Malwa.
9. For more on Albert Lord, see chapter 5.
10. I encountered the term rekhtā connected to Kabir only because Prahladji has a
few rekhtā compositions that he often sings in the place where usually sākhīs
are presented, or in combination with sākhīs, before the bhajan. Imre Bangha
provides a fine article on rekhtā. “The Persian word rekhta (‘poured, interspersed,
mixed’) had several technical meanings. Prior to the eighteenth century, it was
part of musical terminology. It also referred to a mode of writing, namely to
poetry written in a language that mixes lines, phrases and vocabulary from
Hindi and Persian (. . . [this] also includes the Arabic vocabulary imbibed by
Persian), in which the Hindavi component is normally Khari Boli and some-
times Braj Bhasha or a mixture of the two. As a musical term, Rekhta appears in
Alauddin Barnavi’s musicological treatise . . . (1655) . . . as a kind of text in which
one sets the words of both langauges to a raga and a tala . . . [which] indicates an
early link between Rekhta and Hindustani music. . . . In the eighteenth century,
Rekhta appears also as the name of Khari Boli mixed with Perso-Arabic vocabu-
lary [notably used by the Urdu poet Mir]” (Bangha 2010, 25–26). Of the four
rekhtās I transcribed from Prahladji, three have Kabir’s chhāp and one that of
Paltu Das. Only one has a conspicuous mix of Hindi khari boli and Perso-Arabic
language. The other three are characterized by yogic terminology.
11. Described in the conclusion to chapter 1.
12. In the simplest version of traditional Hindu social stratification, there are
four varṇas (classes). In texts known collectively as Dharma Shastras, the top
three varṇas—brāhmaṇ, kṣhatriyā, and vaiśhya—are considered “twice-born,”
as they are permitted to partiake of upper caste rites of passage. The fourth
class—śhūdra—is separate and defined as a servant class, created to serve the
upper three. The groups who came to be known as untouchables are yet another
level, outside the varṇa hierarchy and much lower in status and ritual purity than
the Shudras. The commonly referenced “caste system” is much more compli-
cated than this, and its history is contested.
13. The heron is proverbial for false holiness. Pure white, it stands still like a yogi,
but its only purpose is to spear a fish.
14. One stanza sung by Prahladji and generally not included by Shabnam and me is
on the satī, or woman who burns herself alive on her deceased husband’s funeral
pyre. See discussion of this poem and this trope in c hapter 2.
15. A few examples: Nirbhay nirguṇ as sung by Kumar Gandharva (Hess 2009a,
88–89); Rang mahal; Piyujī binā; Panchhiḍā bhāī—three songs often sung by
Prahladji; Mukhtiyar Ali’s explanation of the jewels in a sākhī that he sings in
the film Had anhad/Bounded-Boundless (Virmani 2008d). The bhajans are full
of references to the mind (man, Sanskrit manas) and other faculties and levels
of consciousness (chit, ahaṃkār, etc.) that are treated more systematically and
abstractly in Sanskrit philosophical traditions. But it would be a big mistake to

think of the content of nirguṇ poetry as merely a crude vernacular version of
yoga/tantra/advaita/sāṃkya philosophy.
16. Right, left, and center are inglā, pinglā, and sukhman, the three major yogic
energy channels
17. Bhajan: Ṭhane gam nī rākhe bhāī, gayā khet sab khāī.
18. Bhajan: Mat kar māyā ko ahaṃkār, mat kar kāyā ko abhimān.
19. Bhajan: Ketā jājo jī bhalā bhāī.
20. Bhajan: Ab ke bachāī le morī mā.
21. moha—attraction, attachment, love, affection, delusion. Note the convergence
of these various meanings. Lagāv, similarly, means attachment, connection,
fellow-feeling, affection.
22. By “that one,” he refers to God or ultimate reality. I have no doubt that he would
sometimes say the things that Shantiji refers to, but I have seen Prahladji cry on
several occasions. The first time was at the airport in 2003, when the group was
leaving for India after our two-month tour in the United States, and we were all
crying. Another instance was in the Bhopal recording session described below
in this section.
23. Once at a mountain retreat where Prahladji had been called for a workshop,
he ruminated on how Kabir might have hit upon the subject of this song and
others: “Kabir always said kahat kabīr. It is a kahnā-sunnā (speaking-hearing)
thing. Direct. Kabir didn’t write or read, but his thinking and understanding
were so powerful. He looked at things directly and understood.” At that point he
looked at the thick ranks of flowers in front of us, on the edge of the Himalayan
hill—orange, pink, violet. “Kabir would have seen flowers like this. He noticed
that some were buds, some were dried up and dead, some were at the peak
of their beauty. A gardener came along and started picking the flowers. Kabir
noticed that he didn’t take the buds or the dried-up ones: only those that were
in full bloom. Right there he understood. So he created that sākhī—mālī āvat
dekhiyā, kaliyāṇ kare pukār / phūl phūl chun liye, kāl hamārī bār—Seeing the gar-
dener come, the buds cry out: / he’s picking the flowers one by one. Tomorrow
it’s our turn.
And the bhajan Jāvo nugarī kāyā. He must have seen someone who died, the
body lying in front of his house, a fine big house, a palace, with so much care
taken on the windows, the doors, the stairways. The body is like that. It’s beauti-
ful, with its doorways and colors. He must have seen the body lying in front of
the house, and he understood. You made a beautiful palace but you couldn’t stay
in it. The one who stayed there is gone.”
24. Bhajan: Mat kar māyā ko ahaṃkār mat kar kaya ko abhimān.
25. Bhajan: Dulahanīṃ gāvahu mangalachār. This is the first pad in the first section
(rāg gauḍī) of S. Das’s Kabīr granthāvalī.
26. Barthwal (1936, 281) explains how Dharamdasi literature sets forth the creation
of twelve false branches of the Panth. “Anurāga Sāgar suggests a bitter dispute
regarding succession to the headship of the Dharamdāsī branch in the sixth
generation from Dharamdās. They also contain recriminations against other
panthas founded on the teachings of Kabīr. According to the Anurāga Sāgar
and other works, in Kali Yuga, Kabīr works for the release of souls untram-
melled by any promise to Niranjan. Still the latter has cheated out of him the
secrets of the Name and has given birth to the twelve Nirguna sects (Dwādaśha
Panth) who prevent the righteous from coming to the shelter of the successors
of Dharamdās whose family Kabīr is said to have ordained the true leadership
continuously for forty-two generations.” Barthwal names some of the founders
of the twelve panths, including derisive nicknames given by the Dharamdasis.
A Kabir Panthi guru named Rampal (who was re-arrested in 2014, on a list of
serious charges, amid violent resistance by his followers) set up a website pro-
moting his own lineage and contesting claims to legitimacy by others. Here he
quotes and comments on the passage from Anurāg Sāgar that proclaims estab-
lishment of the twelve panths: <http://www.kabirpanth.jagatgururampalji.org/
fourteenth_mahant_native_seat.php>
27. Bhajan: Begam kī gam kar le re haṃsā.
28. This is an example of how mapping oral traditions can reveal the influence of
regional and sectarian cultures on the living body of Kabir literature.
29. This may be because I was focusing on the fixed text of the Bījak, not listening
to folksingers in the countryside.
30. Bhajan: Aisā des hamārā.
31. Bhajan: Bheḍā hai par miltā nāhīṇ.
32. English lacks other words that carry the resonance of “love,” but Hindi-Urdu has
quite a few including prem, pyār, iśhk, prīti, sneha, all of which occur in Kabir and
other nirguṇ poets.
33. Chapter 6 provides a profile of Kaluram.
34. jāgīrī in the Mughal period refers to a land-grant with authority to rule.
35. On this occasion, Kaluram sings sabūrī (contentment or patience) in the last
line. I have also heard sarūrī (joy) in this line and have translated the latter here.
36. til ole, the last two words, are interesting. Til can mean sesame seed or the pupil
of the eye. Olā has two separate meanings—a hailstone (not relevant here); and
a screen, or figuratively secrecy. Archaic meanings are given as gupt bāt, bhed,
rahasya—hidden matter, secret, mystery.
37. Bhajan: Maiṇ divānā nām kā.
38. Bhajan: Pī le amīras dhārā gagan meṇ jhaḍī lagī.
39. Bhajan: Satguru ne bhang pilāī, akhiyoṇ meṇ lālan chhāī.
40. Bhajan: Barkhā agam chalī āī.
41. Bhajan: Gyān ki jaḍiyā, daī mere sadguru.
42. Bhajan: Hame satguru se milnā hai.
43. I have heard many times that Kabir in particular and nirguṇ in general are
just “simple” renditions of Advaita Vedanta philosophy—something like the
way stained glass windows made the Bible accessible to illiterate peasants in
medieval Europe. Kabir gives us māyā, ātma, paramātma, karma, mokśha, and
advice to eradicate the five passions, with some extended metaphors from the
Upaniṣhads, all in a nice simple Hindi for the common folk. At first this made
some sense to me, but over the years I have gone from vague irritation to whole-
sale rejection of this claim. Kabir’s eye sees a world that doesn’t exist in Sanskrit
philosophy. It is a flesh-and-blood eye, gazing at people in their everyday activi-
ties. It is a critical eye with a voice to match, calling out abuses and lies. The voice
shows a sense of humor with a satirical slant. A different kind of intelligence is
operating. Consider these among countless examples:
When your dad was alive, you wouldn’t give him a scrap of bread.
When he’s dead, you shave your head and feed his soul through a crow.
***
One voice says Vishnu’s in Vaikunth,
a third says the Lord’s in Shiva’s city.
For ages they’ve marketed these products.
Shankara (my straw man for Advaita) does not give us chickens and widows,
shopkeepers and dogs. Shankara has a shaved head and does not make fun of
men with shaved heads. Kabir’s evocations of the everyday lives of ordinary peo-
ple are not just colorful add-ons. They create a fundamentally different vision.
C h a p t er 5
1. Linguist Deborah Tannen observes: “[S]‌ trategies associated with oral tradi-
tion place emphasis on shared knowledge and the interpersonal relationship
between communicator and audience. In this, they ‘elaborate’ what Bateson
(1972) calls the metacommunicative function of language: the use of words to
convey something about the relationship between communicator and audience.
Literate tradition emphasizes what Bateson calls the communicative function
of language: the use of words to convey information or content” (Tannen 1982,
2–3). In his essay in the same volume, Wallace Chafe describes how “speakers
interact with their audiences, writers do not” (ibid., 45).
2. In 2012, Lord’s famous book was in storage in Stanford’s library system and
had to be called out of exile to be read, showing the generational rise and fall of
stardom in academia.
3. Works that pay particular attention to the interplay of oral and written modes in
religious scriptures and in India include Coburn 1984 and Graham 1987.
4. <www.pathwaysproject.org>, accessed in July 2009.

5. As recently as 1987, in Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the
History of Religion, William Graham wrote: “We live in a world increasingly
dominated by the printed word—a world, as the novelist Italo Calvino has put
it, ‘dense with writing that surrounds us on all sides,’ whether in newsprint,
magazines, and paperbacks, or on billboards” (ix). In the post-2000 world the
adverb “increasingly” is not applicable; it should in fact be replaced by its
opposite.
6. In 2013, I found that the website had changed quite a bit since I had gathered
quotations from it four years earlier. This is Foley’s revised and improved state-
ment of the main thesis.
7. Perhaps McLuhan deserves some credit for making the connection between
print and nationalism, a central point in Benedict Anderson’s famous 1983
work Imagined Communities.
8. McLuhan 1964, cited at <http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm>.
9. <http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm>, accessed December 2012.
Another interesting prophetic statement by Nicola Tesla is quoted on
the same page, even more striking as it was much earlier. Tesla said in
1926: “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted
into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and
rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly,
irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony
we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face,
despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments
through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared
with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
10. Chaytor 1945, cited in McLuhan 1962, 88.
11. By speaking of “our own experience,” do I imply a universal “we” that won’t hold
up to examination? I leave this as a debatable question.
12. I am grateful to Sean Hanretta for introducing me to this work
13. It’s not a coincidence that the first global web-browser, launched in 1993, was
called Mosaic.
14. We can now learn in detail about what is happening neurologically and cog-
nitively when we read. Stanislas Dehaene’s 2009 book Reading in the Brain is
a scientifically sophisticated, widely accessible and fascinating study. It’s clear
that visual and auditory functions, written words and speech, are enmeshed
with each other in complex ways. But they are also separable; they are not
the same.
15. “If this book does nothing else, perhaps it will convince you that there are more
than five senses. . . . The idea that we have exactly five senses dates back at least
to Aristotle. . . . Nine would be a much better much better estimate” (Henshaw
2012, 6–7).
16. Later Horowitz gives further details on how hearing is much faster than
seeing: see 96ff.
17. Hearing: Science of the Senses, a film described at <http://films.com/ItemDetails.
aspx?TitleId=26468> (accessed June 5, 2013). In the preview clip available on the
site, this speaker is unidentified.
18. Does this mean that we must fundamentally imagine sound as vibration, pro-
duced and experienced through many bodily and environmental factors, not
necessarily tied to reception by ears? We could say this, but we must also say
that the ears have been specially constructed to receive and further transmit
such vibrations. In all but very exceptional circumstances, ears are central and
crucial to the reception and negotiation of sound.
19. <http://homepages.bw.edu/~rfowler/pubs/secondoral/index.html>, accessed
July 17, 2009.
20. For example, Carr 2011 and Turkle 2012.
There is a visually and verbally witty four-minute cartoon video called “What
the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” inspired by Nicholas Carr (2011), at
<http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=4057> accessed August 2013. Carr
is heard calmly narrating at some points, along with a more frenetic voice that
simulates our state of mind when careening around from link to link. The video
shows how the constant distraction of email and internet practices destroys our
ability to pay sustained attention to anything. Attention is the key to intelligence,
creativity, and ultimately, the piece proposes, our humanity. The video is persua-
sive and entertaining. And it comes to us via the internet. When I received an
email that directed me to it, I interrupted whatever I was planning to do at that
time to follow the links.
Here is an intriguing statement on technology and love by the novelist
Jonathan Franzen:
“Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what
consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creat-
ing products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship,
in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly,
and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s
replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.
“To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne,
is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes—a world of hurri-
canes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance—with a world
so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.
“Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is there-
fore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in
turn.” New York Times, May 28, 2011, <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/
opinion/29franzen.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212&pagewant
ed=all>.
21. Wikipedia does a pretty good job with its brief definition of “dissociation”: “a
term in psychology describing a wide array of experiences from mild detachment
from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and
emotional reality. It is commonly displayed on a continuum. The major charac-
teristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality—rather
than a loss of reality as in psychosis. In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded
as a coping mechanism or defense mechanism in seeking to master, minimize
or tolerate stress—including boredom or conflict. At the nonpathological end
of the continuum, dissociation describes common events such as daydream-
ing while driving a vehicle. Further along the continuum are non-pathological
altered states of consciousness.
“More pathological dissociation involves dissociative disorders. . . .These altera-
tions can include: a sense that self or the world is unreal . . . ; a loss of memory . . . ;
forgetting identity or assuming a new self . . . ; . . . fragmentation of identity or
self into separate streams of consciousness . . . and complex post-traumatic stress
disorder. Dissociative disorders are sometimes triggered by trauma, but may be
preceded only by stress, psychoactive substances, or no identifiable trigger at all.”
22. See Siegel 2012 and <http://drdansiegel.com>.
23. On National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Aug. 2, 2010.
24. McLuhan had discussed Plato’s critique of writing two decades earlier (1962, 25).
C h a p t er 6
1. Pete Seeger’s famous song “Guantanamera” is a setting of the Cuban poet and
freedom fighter Jose Marti’s poem. Seeger gives a translation on CD 2 of the
album We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert (recorded on June
8, 1963).
2. Eklavya chose another fiery line as a title for the official report on its project with
Kabir singers: kaṭuk vachan kabīr ke, sun ke āg lag jāī, “Kabir’s words are searing,
just hearing them sets off a fire” (Eklavya 1999).
3. Official government designations include Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes,
Other Backward Castes (abbreviated as SC, ST, OBC). The first two roughly line
up with “Dalit” or former “untouchable” groups, the third with groups loosely
affiliated with Shudra castes.
4. See, for example, Mukta 1998; N. Martin 1999, 2000, 2002; Hawley and
Juergensmeyer 2007, chap. 1.
5. Harbans Mukhia, “Eklavya loses thumb again.” The Hindu, Aug. 5, 2002, <http://
www.thehindu.com/2002/08/05/stories/2002080500251000.htm>, accessed in
August 2011.
6. Translated from a conversation in Hindi.

7. Eklavya workers were interested in a wide range of social-political issues,
including caste, poverty, religious authority, superstition, exploitation, commu-
nalism. Many urban artists, intellectuals, and activists in the 1990s and 2000s
were attracted to Kabir and the Sufi-sant heritage because of their dismay at the
country’s communal turn, the resurgence of religious nationalism and result-
ing social division, hatred, and violence. Shabnam Virmani began the Kabir
Project because she had been so disturbed by the extreme communal violence
in Gujarat in 2002. But Malwa Kabir singers had different priorities. The two top
issues for them were caste and organized religion, particularly the Kabir Panth
with which many of them were affiliated. Communalism was a more remote
topic that didn’t affect their daily lives. The politics of nationalism was even more
remote. All the musicians in the Kabir manch were born as Hindus in the broad-
est sense of the term. There were no Muslims. Rather than prejudice or exclu-
sion, this reflects the fact that historically in India, Kabir has been embraced by
and folded into the Hindu community far more than the Muslim. (See inter-
views on Muslim views of Kabir in Virmani 2008d and Lorenzen 1981a.) The
disconnect between Malwa Kabir singers’ views and national politics was shown
by a younger musician who told me in 2004 that he was considering going into
politics with the BJP. I was appalled. Did he realize that the BJP was linked to the
Sangh Parivar and Hindu nationalism, and that the Sangh Parivar’s values were
terribly opposed to Kabir’s? He didn’t.
8. In March 2002 I visited Dinesh Sharma’s home in Devali village. His father
was the leader of a large mandalī that sang in a different style from the
Malwa style, associated with the Singaji Panth in the Nimar region of M.P.
They obviously got pleasure and a high out of it, singing loudly for several
hours in a call and response fashion with drums and cymbals. Many closed
their eyes for concentration. There wasn’t much melody. The tempo regu-
larly changed from slow to fast and back again. The drummer seemed to
dance with his upper body and head as he played. But when, at my request,
the leader started giving long explanations in Hindi of each verse, he went
to sleep on his drum. I then said the explanations should stop, and he came
back to life. I ask how their bodies and minds changed after hours of sing-
ing. He answered, “We feel love for paramātma.” I asked again, emphasizing
the body. “We feel lightness” (halkāpan). They didn’t seem to have any inter-
est in the critical, socially relevant songs of Kabir. From the words I picked
up, their songs featured mythologies of Kabir’s career as an avatar; moral
admonitions (“having received a human body, why don’t you keep it pure?”);
yogic imagery. Toward midnight they built up to an intense pitch, cymbals
swinging and banging, drummer in the middle totally absorbed, his head
dancing. They gestured, their bodies went up and down vertically, voices
got fuller. A smaller circle of about twelve at that point, they were all very
concentrated. I retired but heard that they started singing a folk genre called
phagun, and from jumping in their seats started jumping on their feet, danc-
ing and shouting till 3 a.m.
9. All material from Kabir manch tapes, registers, and files has been translated by
LH from Hindi unless otherwise indicated.
10. See n. 2 above.
11. The poem, from the Bījak (Hess and Singh 2002, 54–55), goes like this:
The pandit’s pedantries are lies. / If saying Ram gave liberation, / saying
candy sweetened the mouth, / saying fire burned your foot, / saying water
quenched your thirst, / saying food banished hunger, / the whole world
would be free. / The parrot gabbles God like a man / but doesn’t know God’s
glory. / When he flies off to the jungle, / he’ll forget God. / If you don’t see, if
you don’t touch, / what’s the use of the Name? / If saying money made you
rich, / nobody would be poor. / If you love lust and delusion, / you can’t get
a glimpse of God. / Kabir says, God is one. / Love the one or shuffle off in
chains / to the City of Death.
12. See chapter 4, n. 8.

13. Article dated February 6, 1992.
14. Lucknow edition of the Times of India, April 22, 1993.
15. Much information on the Balais (or Balahis) in this area, including some of
the Kabir singers I knew and worked with, is available in “Caste, Class and
Sect: A Study of the Balahis in Malwa circa 1940–1994,” a master’s thesis sub-
mitted to the History Department of Delhi University by Shahana Bhattacharya
in 1996. At the time of this writing, Bhattacharya is on the faculty of Kirori Mal
College, University of Delhi. She was kind enough to provide me with a copy of
her thesis, which I had seen in the Dewas Eklavya office. She notes in her pref-
ace that the Malwa lower castes in general, and the Balahis in particular, have a
striking familiarity with Kabir’s teachings, though only about 15 percent of the
Balahis she surveyed were formally members of the Kabir Panth. About their
status, she wrote: “balahis, both by their own standards, and those of most other
castes in the area, are considered to rank the highest among all the ‘untouch-
able’ groups in the caste hierarchy in Malwa. The ritual distance that exists
between, say, the balahis, and the bagris, chamars, and other scheduled castes
. . . seems to be enhanced by the distinctly higher economic status of the balahis
today” (vii).
16. The same title was given to this booklet of socially conscious song texts (dis-
cussed and translated above, p. 263–264) and to the first audiocassette by
Prahladji’s group, produced by the manch in 1993 (see reference to the cassette
in Suresh Patel’s interview).
17. The play was Kabīr by the great Hindi writer Bhisham Sahni (1915–2003). Were
the director and the playwright related? I don’t know. Kiran Sahni and his group
are shown rehearsing and discussing the play in the film Kabira khaḍā bazar
meṇ (Virmani 2008b).
18. Around 2004. Shabnam’s tapes aren’t marked with dates, but they are classified
carefully for easy retrieval. This cassette is marked MP Raj DV1, the interview
beginning about 22 minutes into the tape.
19. On Kapil Tiwari, see c hapters 3 and 8.
20. This song, Kaī ḍhūnḍhtī phiro mhārī helī, is sung by Prahladji in an early section
of Shabnam Virmani’s film Chalo hamārā des/Come to My Country.
21. This song, Guru sam dātā koī nahīṇ, is sung by Shabnam and Prahladji during
the closing credits of the film Chalo hamārā des/Come to My Country (Virmani
2008a).
22. Bhajan: Sāhib ne bhāng pilāī.
23. Bhajan: Panchhīḍā bhāī.
24. In 2014 Narayan Singh Delmia took the lead in reorganizing the Kabir manch,
with monthly meetings and some financial support from private donors. In
2015 I heard that it had taken off and the groups were gathering enthusiastically.
25. The word translated as “blessing” is bakśhīśh, which in common parlance is a
tip or gratuity. This is an unusual usage. Discussions of how best to translate it
led to this imperfect solution. It seems to be a rough and whimsical use of an
unexpected marketplace image—like bhāng.
26. For a rigorous examination of the historicity of Ramanand, see Agrawal 2009a,
chap. 5 (Hindi); and Agrawal 2009b, 135–70 (English). Agrawal (2001) has
sharply criticized what he regards as the extreme identity politics and other issues
in Dharamvir’s later writings. He draws scholars Winand Callewaert and J. S.
Hawley into his criticism insofar as they accept Dharamvir’s critique of Dvivedi’s
“brahminical bias” (see chapter 3 above). See also Horstmann 2002,115–42 (her
essay, “Hazariprasad Dvivedi’s Kabir,” in the volume she edited).
27. The implication is: stay in touch with yourself, let your own nature bring forth
good company.
28. Holy places associated with Krishna and Shiva.
29. A sākhī from the Bījak. Hess and Singh 2002, 121.
30. This is a variant of sākhī 280 in the Bījak (Hess and Singh 2002, 123). Oil was
sold for cooking, pulp for animal fodder, so both were useful.
31. He once told me a story about how his wife sent him out with money to buy
rākhīs, the ornamented string bracelets used for the Raksha Bandhan festival.
This important family-oriented holiday celebrates the relation between broth-
ers and sisters. Females tie the bracelets on the arms of males who are in their
actual families or with whom they have created a ritual relationship. Narayanji
took the money and couldn’t resist spending it on a book—in this case one by
Osho (Rajneesh), whose commentaries on Kabir and other spiritual matters
have received much praise. He went home without the rākhīs and was in big
trouble with the women in the family.
32. The verse refers to Gangaur, a festival devoted to Gauri (Parvati), popular in
Rajasthan and parts of M.P. and Gujarat, with fervent participation by women
devotees.
33. There are hierarchies and degrees of untouchability practiced even among those
castes whom upper castes lump together as untouchable.
34. Anu Gupta and Arvind Sardana, who have worked for Eklavya in Dewas for
many years. They are always my hosts when I stay in Dewas. In 2011 Arvind
became the director of the whole Eklavya organization.
35. Shabnam and I are both outsiders to rural Kabir culture in different ways. The
fact that we had power to open doors for local people shaped our relationships
in various ways, which we often reflected on and talked about—with each other
and with Malwa friends.
36. Singaji was a nirguṇ sant of Madhya Pradesh, born in the late sixteenth century,
whose followers tend to be of higher castes.
37. In a culture where people generally avoid touching leftover food, a wife’s eating
her husband’s leftovers is a kind of intimate practice, as well as an expression of
purity hierarchies.
38. The conversation occurred in August 2003 with Arvind Sardana and Prakash
Kant at the Dewas Eklavya office.
39. Namvar Singh is a very eminent Hindi literary scholar and critic who has written
important works on Kabir. It was he who first told me about the Eklavya Kabir
manch, when we met at a conference in Heidelberg in 2000. He urged me to go
there and write about what Eklavya and the mandalīs had done together.
40. See c hapter 1 for a description of another poignant occasion on which this song
was sung.
C h a p t er 7
1. Special thanks to David Lorenzen, who responded to my inquiries with a stream

of information that helped me to complete the article that was the original form
of this chapter (Hess 2009b). David has been a reliable (and forgiving) friend and
colleague since we first met in Varanasi in 1976.
2. Here is a version of this well-known story from a Sikh website: “Feeling his
end was near, the Hindus said we will cremate you, the Muslims said we will
bury you. Guru Nanak said: ‘You place flowers on either side, Hindus on my
right, Muslims on my left. Those whose flowers remain fresh tomorrow will
have their way.’ He then asked them to pray and lay down covering himself with
a sheet. Thus on September 22, 1539 in the early hours of the morning Guru
Nanak merged with the eternal light of the Creator. When the followers lifted the
sheet they found nothing except the flowers which were all fresh. The Hindus
took theirs and cremated them, while the Muslims took their flowers and buried
them.” < http://www.sikhs.org/guru1.htm>
3. Lorenzen 1991, 125. Lorenzen dates this text at around 1600 (ibid., 10–13).
4. Ibid., 41. A song chanted regularly in Kabir Panthi rituals refers specifically to
this episode (Lorenzen 1996, 251).
5. Bījak śhabda 4, translated in Hess and Singh 2002, 42. (I have slightly changed
my own translation here.)
6. By “myth” I mean not falsehood, as in common parlance, but sacred
narrative—the stories communities tell to convey the deepest truths about their
founders, histories, and understanding of reality (Dundes 1984).
7. According to the official state website in 2007, Chhattisgarh’s population includes
44.7 percent Scheduled Castes and Tribes. These communities are indispens-
able for politicians. The site notes that religious reform movements stressing
equality have been important in Chhattisgarh, and it provides a paragraph on the
Kabir Panth.<http://chhattisgarh.nic.in/profile/corigin.htm#mainhistory>. At
the two Kabir Panth melās I attended in Damakheda and Bandhavgarh in 2002,
the then Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Ajit Jogi, made conspicuous appear-
ances, and the speeches included warm mutual praise from the leaders of the
Panth and the state government.
8. Usually given as 1518. See Lorenzen 1991, 9–18.
9. When I say that “Kabir” was critical or positive or emphasized certain points,
I refer to themes that are common across all the important collections attributed
to him.
10. David Lorenzen notes that not all members of the Kabir Chaura–based division
of the Panth believe Kabir was an avatar who manifested himself on Lahartara
Pond. In particular, he says that its current leader Vivek Das (about whom
more below) does not believe this (email, July 3, 2006). The Damakheda-based
Dharamdasi Kabir Panth does teach this miraculous version of Kabir as avatar.
11. Caste distinctions are notoriously entrenched in Indian society, and a particular
outpost of the sect will only be as enlightened as its leadership. The Chhattisgarh
website cited in n. 7 above states: “The Kabir Panth does not believe in caste
hierarchies. However in contemporary times the Panth has been divided along
caste lines. The only time that they do not adhere to caste hierarchies is in the
presence of the Chief Guru on the birth anniversary of Kabir.” Keay observes
that Kabīr’s attempts to preach against caste “met with little success” and that
separate chaukā āratī rituals were arranged for different castes (Keay 1931,109).
Lorenzen finds the Kabir Chaura ritual practices quite free of caste distinc-
tions (Lorenzen 1996, 249–50). I have heard Acharya Prakashmuni Nam Sahab
of Damakheda speak vigorously against the caste system and was told that he
had arranged high-profile marriages, including that of his own brother, across
castes. On the other hand, in a film interview (Virmani 2008b), Hiralal Sisodiya
laughingly dismisses claims that the Kabir Panth is truly caste-free, reciting a
funny couplet about the perpetual resurfacing of caste practices.
12. David Lorenzen has been a mine of information on the various Kabir Panth
traditions for many years. During the writing of this chapter, he pointed out
to me that one important tradition, the Pārakhī sect headed by Abhilash Das,
are atheists who seem to have considerable Jain influence: “Abhilash Das’s
group is an offshoot of the Burhanpur śhākhā which, in theory at least, follows
the Purandas ‘Trijya’ commentary on the Bījak. Puran Das (and Abhilash Das)
believe in immortal jivas [souls] but not in ishvar [God]. This doctrine, and the
Burhanpur śhākhā in general, seem to be much influenced by Jainism, which of
course follows a similar doctrine. The Burhanpur sadhus also worry a lot about
eating bugs (jivas), etc. like the Jains. . . . Abhilash Das is an impressive organizer
and a very prolific writer. He has his own printing press. His Kabīr darśhan book
is important. He spends part of the year in Allahabad, part in Calcutta, and part
on tour (especially in the Nagpur region). He has a fair number of sadhus under
his control and also a group of women sadhus. He is said to be a Brahmin of a
family somehow related to Ram Chandra Shukla” (email, July 6, 2006). Abhilash
Das passed away in 2013.
13. For a summary of stories about Kabir’s disciples and the Panths they founded,
see Lorenzen 1991, 55–65. Recent historical accounts in Hindi of the Kabir Panth
with its various branches have been written by Dr. Rajendra Prasad (1999), who
is affiliated with Damakheda; and Vivek Das, Acharya of Kabir Chaura (2003a).
An important early scholarly work by P. D. Barthwal, The Nirguna School of
Hindi Poetry, has an extensive annotated bibliography that gives evidence of early
rivalry within as well as among Kabir Panth lineages: “These works . . . show
what shape the teachings of Kabir took at the hands of his followers mostly those
belonging to the Dharamdasi branch. They also help in constructing the history
of that branch. For instance, Anuraga Sagar suggests a bitter dispute regarding
succession to the headship of the Dharamdasi branch in the sixth generation
from Dharamdas. They also contain recriminations against the other panthas
founded on the teachings of Kabir” (Barthwal 1936, 281).
14. A rival faction of Dharamdas-following Kabir Panthis is based at Kharsiya in
Chhattisgarh.
15. Some Kabir mythology claims that he had five penises.
16. “CHAPTER XV of the Indian Penal Code: OF OFFENCES RELATING TO
RELIGION. 145[295A]. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage reli-
gious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious
feelings of any class of 146[citizens of India], 147[by words, either spoken or writ-
ten, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts
to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with
imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 148[three

years], or with fine, or with both.] . . .
298. Uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feel-
ings of any person—Whoever, with the deliberate intention of wounding the reli-
gious feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing
of that person or makes any gesture in the sight of that person or places, any
object in the sight of that person, shall be punished with imprisonment of either
description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both”
(<http://www.helplinelaw.com/bareact/bact.php?no=15&dsp=ind-penal-code&P
HPSESSID=cf79e2d637bbaa65e271dd8bd3a3913a> accessed in 2008).
As I learned in excellent papers by Barton Scott and Cassie Adcock at the
2014 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, this law was
enacted under colonial rule, not in independent India. Thanks to Ajay Skaria
for referring me to this illuminating article, which locates the history of Section
295A in the 1920s: Neeti Nair, “Beyond the 'Communal' 1920s: The Problem
of Intention, Legislative Pragmatism, and the Making of Section 295A of the
Indian Penal Code,” Indian Economic Social History Review (2013) 50: 317–340.
17. A violent attack on Prahladji and Shabnam by Kabir Panthis occurred in
Vadodara (Baroda), Gujarat, in 2010. After his falling-out with the Dharamdasi
Kabir Panth in 2005 (recounted later in this chapter), some of the devout fol-
lowers of that Panth and its Guru became quite hostile. At a Kabir Festival in
Vadodara, Prahladji had a concert, and Shabnam’s film Kabirā khaḍā bāzār meṇ
was shown. After the program, as they were walking to their car in the parking
lot, a gang of Kabir Panthis confronted them and started beating Prahladji. They
managed to get into the car and the driver took off. The attackers threw rocks; a
window shattered over Prahladji and Shabnam. Another group of attackers was
blocking the main gate. The skillful driver managed to escape without further
injury to anyone.
18. Gangasharan Das was the name he used when I met him in the late 1970s. He
later changed his name to Gangasharan Shastri.
19. See also Barari 1980. The title refers to the helmsman as one who holds the
mysteries of the chaukā.
20. This is the name used in the Damakheda Kabir Panth for the supreme being
who sends forth avatars in each of the four ages. Satyapurush is like Vishnu for
Vaishnavs.
21. Bandhavgarh is a remote spot in the far north of Madhya Pradesh, known today
for its tourist-attracting wild animal reserve. It is important in this branch of
the Kabir Panth as the home of Dharamdas, the wealthy merchant who gave his
money to his guru Kabir and became the founder of the Panth. They believe that
Dharamdas spent years with the master in a cave at the top of a high cliff, receiv-
ing teachings and preparing to establish the true lineage of Kabir’s followers.
The teachings would be written down in the form of the Anurāg Sāgar, this sect’s
most cherished text. Acharya Prakashmuni Nam Sahab had organized the melā
at Bandhavgarh for the first time in April 2002, saying it was a longtime dream
of his to bring the Kabir Panthis to this spot and lead a pilgrimage through the
forest and up the cliff to the sacred place of origin.
22. The function was always held on a purnimā (full moon) date. The choice of
Buddha Purnima that year was partly just how the scheduling happened to
work out, but everyone was also aware of the special importance of Buddha and
Buddhism to B. R. Ambedkar, the great leader of untouchable liberation.
23. Years later Prahladji told me that the first time he did chaukā āratī, he had an
experience, an insight, that caused a tremor (ghabrāhat) in him. What is really
happening with bandagī? It is not that the disciple looks to the guru to get some-
thing, or that the guru has an idea of doing something to the disciple, but that
they look into each other’s eyes and see themselves. Suddenly he realized that
they are one, there is no difference, and that is the true meaning of guru and
disciple.
24. These views are summarized from several video conversations filmed by
Shabnam Virmani.
25. It is remarkable to note that Prahladji gave this interview in 2004, while attending the
great annual gathering of the Kabir Panth and still a mahant. Describing outrageous
excesses in certain verses that enjoin absolute obedience to and veneration of the guru, he
laughed at the absurd claim that “if you listen to any insult of the guru, you’re a criminal
and should be beaten up.” In 2010, this is exactly what happened to him. He was beaten
up by Panth zealots who called him a gurudrohī (see pp. 309-310 and p. 431, n. 17).
26. One weakness in Prahladji’s argument was that he was well-off, having a
government job as a schoolteacher as well as substantial income from his
success as a singer. Other mahants were likely to be poorer and to have fewer
choices.
27. Lorenzen 1981, 162. Gangasharanji made the same statement in a 2003 conver-
sation with me.
28. “The earliest reference to the chaukā seems to be that of the above translated
‘Jñān gudari’ (“Quilt of Knowledge”), which states:
He disperses all his egotism and pride, / as he lights his body’s chauka. //
Making mind the sandalwood, intellect the flowers, / welfare his bow of
respect, he finds the root. // Making faith the flywhisk, love the incense, / he
finds the pristine name, the form of the Lord.
. . . the date of the ‘Jñān gudarī’ is unknown . . . The oldest manuscript . . .

is dated . . . 1838 C.E. . . . The presence of the ‘Jñān gudarī’ in the Sandhyā pāṭh
booklets of almost all branches of the Kabir Panth, however, suggests that it is
an old composition, perhaps older than the split of the Kabīr Panth into its Kabīr
Chaurā and Dharmdāsī branches. This split cannot be dated with any assurance
either, but it probably took place over 300 years ago” (Lorenzen 1996, 238).
29. In a 2007 update, based on his visit to India in January, David Lorenzen wrote to
me about the implementation of chaukā āratī reform that Acharya Vivek Das had
called for in the Kabir Chaura sect. Vivek Das had compromised with other lead-
ers who wanted to keep the chaukā. They had started to describe it as “guru puja,”
keeping the forms almost identical but eliminating references to Satyapurush—the
supreme being who, especially for the Dharamdasis, is seen as the source of Kabir’s
four avatars in the four ages (email from Lorenzen, January 30, 2007). Meanwhile
Vivek Das’s attack on the Dharamdasis had grown even sharper. In a 2006 book,
Vaṃśha kabīr kā aṃśa, he goes so far as to refer to them as “cockroaches.”
30. I did not attend this melā, but got a report from Shabnam Virmani, who caught
some of these comments by Huzur-sahab on video.
31. The power of fragmentary evidence has been forever impressed on me by
Gyanendra Pandey’s brilliant article “In Defense of the Fragment” (Pandey 1997).
C h a p t er 8
1. Other prominent scholars have written on political interpretations of Kabir. The

most prominent and persistent on this theme is David Lorenzen, many of whose
works are listed in the References. I have cited Purushottam Agrawal in this
chapter. His Akath kahānī prem kī (2009a) and earlier works are highly recom-
mended. Dr. Dharamvir’s Kabīr ke ālochak (1997) presented a Dalit interpretation
that vigorously criticized Brahmin scholars of Hindi literature who had previ-
ously dominated the discourse. Monika Horstmann gives a glimpse in English
of Dharamvir’s critique of Hazariprasad Dvivedi (2002, 124–25). Gail Omvedt
(2008) writes of Marathi and Hindi bhakti poets as “anticaste intellectuals.”
Nancy Martin urges us to observe subtle ways in which bhakti figures like Kabir,
Mirabai, and Ravidas give strength and inspiration to low-caste and economically
poor people in rural North India. Invoking both Christian liberation theology and
James Scott’s “weapons of the weak,” she says that low-caste communities share
messages of equality, the dignity of work, the nonseparateness of body and spirit,
and faith and joy under hard circumstances, which sustain them in meaningful
ways: “The theology . . . articulated in narrative and song by Meghvāl performers
in rural western Rajasthan . . . is not revolutionary, but rather speaks of loving
God in the midst of suffering and pain. It is a theology of dignity and self-respect,
which privileges the wisdom and religious authority that are particularly the prov-
ince of the poor and disenfranchised” (N. Martin 2002, 202).
2. The rise of Hindu nationalist politics in the 1990s, accompanied by growing
polarization between Hindus and Muslims (as well as Christians and other
minorities), has been noted in chapter 6. The worst flashpoints of communal
violence were in 1992–93, triggered by the demolition of the Babri mosque in
Ayodhya; and in 2002 in Gujarat, when the burning of a railway car in Godhra
caused the deaths of fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, leading
in turn to months of violence mostly victimizing Muslims.
3. Quotations come from the published essay in the catalog, on which his more
informal opening remarks were based.
4. Chetāvanī is discussed as one of the local ways of categorizing Kabir bhajans in
chapter 4.
5. SAHMAT is an organization created in 1989 after the murder of Safdar Hashmi,
a theater director, writer, and activist. Hashmi was attacked in broad daylight
during a street theater performance. “Writers, painters, scholars, poets, archi-
tects, photographers, designers, cultural activists and media persons formed
the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust,” carrying out “a resolve to resist the forces
threatening the essentially pluralist and democratic spirit of creative expression”
<http://www.sahmat.org/aboutsahmat.html>. SAHMAT is both an acronym for
the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and a Hindi word meaning agreement or
harmony. The organization has been active continuously since 1989. In 1992,
after the demolition of the 1526 mosque in Ayodhya known as the Babri Masjid,
SAHMAT produced a series of concerts in Ayodhya featuring bhakti and Sufi
music and poetry. The concert series was called Anahad garje, a phrase from
Kabir that means “The unstruck sound roars.”
6. Santo dekho jag baurānā. An English version is in Hess and Singh 2002, 42.
7. For a brief and evocative account of how rasa theory reaches across aesthetic
and religious domains, see Goswamy 1986. Discussions of rasa in the arts
go back some two thousand years to the classic Nātya Śhastra. Major adapta-
tions of rasa in the religious realm are seen in the works of Abhinavagupta, the
eleventh-century philosopher of Kashmir Shaivism (Masson and Patwardhan
1970) and the rāgānugā bhakti of Gauḍiyā Vaishnavism (Haberman 1988).
Chapter 4 has a section on themes of “liquid joy” in Malwa’s Kabir.
8. <www.marxists.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1924/01/x01.htm>, accessed August
2013. Alternate translation by George Lukacs on the same site: “Gorky recorded
Lenin’s very characteristic words spoken after he listened to Beethoven’s
Appassionata sonata: ‘I know the Appassionata inside out and yet I am willing
to listen to it every day. It is wonderful, ethereal music. On hearing it I proudly,
maybe somewhat naively, think: See! people are able to produce such marvels!’ He
then winked, laughed and added sadly: ‘I’m often unable to listen to music, it gets
on my nerves, I would like to stroke my fellow beings and whisper sweet nothings
in their ears for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abomi-
nable hell they are living in. However, today one shouldn’t caress anybody-for
people will only bite off your hand; strike, without pity, although theoretically we
are against any kind of violence. Umph, it is, in fact, an infernally difficult task!’ ”
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/xxxx/lenin.htm>
9. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in 1925, widely regarded as the most
powerful component of the Sangh Parivar or family of political and cultural orga-
nizations that have coalesced around Hindu nationalism since the late 1980s.
10. Among many sources on this are King 1999 and Masuzawa 2005.
11. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/us/as-esalen-celebrates-its-p
ast-its-future-is-debated.html?hpw, accessed August 2013. Among recent books
mapping the spiritual-religious terrain is Jeffrey Kripal’s Esalen: America and
the Religion of No Religion (2008). Others include Goldberg 2013; Bender 2010;
Schmidt 2012. Kripal and Goldberg are especially knowledgeable about Indian
influences on “the West.” Bender traces a peculiarly American spirituality that
focuses on “individual meaning, experience, and exploration” but has “historic
roots in the nineteenth century and a great deal in common with traditional
religious movements.” Schmidt looks at both Asian and American sources in
his book, which, according to a publisher’s blurb “explores America’s abiding
romance with spirituality as religion’s better half.”
Thanks to Kathryn Lofton for references to Schmidt and Bender. In response
to my question about the class location of the “spiritual not religious” crowd,
Lofton says that their fieldwork does demonstrate a “bourgeois demographic”
and a widespread consumer culture of spirituality in contemporary America.
But she also says that the subject is more complicated. Bender and Schmidt trace
American spirituality back two centuries. Lofton adds: “the language of ‘spirit’
and ‘spirituality’ has always circulated in evangelical circles . . . and evangelical-
ism has (a) a critical relationship to the question of institutional power, (b) a
wide-ranging class demographic” (email, Oct. 18, 2012).
12. Purushottom Agrawal (2000, 133–37) has critically traced the genealogy of “mys-
ticism” and found it to be problematic. His essay title, translated from Hindi, is
“The Politics of Calling Kabir a Mystic.” I still use the word sparingly, lacking a
good alternative.
13. Have the conditions of late capitalism (alienation, individualism, competition,
mobility erasing connection with place, weakened family ties, growing isolation)
undermined the traditional ways in which religions served human needs, open-
ing a wider split between “religious” and “spiritual”? On July 28, 2013, I listened
to New Dimensions—a US radio program, on the air since 1973, featuring spiri-
tual speakers of all kinds. The guest was David Bennett, author of a book on near
death experiences and the wisdom associated with them. Near the end of his
interview, he spoke of hosting circles of people at his home in central New York.
Avoiding labels with religious baggage, he called these people simply “experi-
encers” and said the circles provided a greatly needed sense of community for
people who had spiritual experiences. I noted to myself that community was one
of the major functions of traditional religious organizations. Then he spoke of
the power of ceremony, describing a “gratitude ceremony” he did every morning
and mentioning the altars set up in various rooms of his house. The interviewer
affirmed the value of ceremonies: through repetition and symbol they have a
deep impact on consciousness. We can see where this is going: when the social
solidarity and ritual provided by religion are pushed out the institutional door,
they come back in the spiritual window.
14. The first is Dharm, adhyātma aur marksvād (“Religion, Spirituality, and
Marxism).” The second, ‘Dharm kī adharmik samīkśhā’ aur dharmetar adhyātma
(“ ‘Nonreligious Investigation of Religion’ and Secular Spirituality”) continues
the discussion of Marx while responding to another author’s critical comments.
Other essays including Dharmsattā banām ātmasattā, adhyātmasattā (“Religious
authority vs. individual authority and spiritual authority”) also refer to Marx on
spirituality, all citing the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
15. “Marx says in the 1844 Manuscripts that just as labor gets alienated—your own
physical activity gets alienated and becomes labor, a commodity to be sold and
purchased in the market—similarly, your basic nature, the essence of your being
human becomes alienated in the form of religion, becomes a commodity, an
activity imposed upon you from an outside agency, divine or diabolical” (Agrawal
2009c,).
16. This idea is first laid out clearly in “Dharmsatta banām ātmasattā, adhyātmasattā”
(2004, 23–26), but references to the Faustian pact are repeated many times
throughout the book as well as in Agrawal 2009a.
17. Kabir sometimes uses imagery of the narrow passage:
Kabir’s house is at the top / of a narrow, slippery track.

An ant’s foot won’t fit. / Oh man, you’re loading a bullock!
***
Dear friend, the formless courtyard / is very narrow.
You can’t get in. / If you get in, you’ll meet the beloved. . . .
Let’s go / to the guru’s country
where you can’t get in / or out.
***
The lane of love is very narrow.
Two can’t get in.
18. Cited in Tulku Thondup, “The Buddha Said Four Things,” Shambhala Sun
10, no. 5 (May 2002): 38. Available online, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche “World
Peace Begins in Your Mind,” <http://www.kosei-shuppan.co.jp/english/text/
mag/2007/07_456_8.html.>
19. It won the Academy Award in 2007 for best foreign language film.
20. From an interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Aug.
10, 2007.
21. Agrawal may be misrepresenting contemporary English usage of “spiritual,”
which is not necessarily different from his understanding of adhyātmik.
22. This is part of the footage shot by Shabnam Virmani, but it was not used in any
of the four documentary films she produced. It will eventually be uploaded on
the website that will go under the name “Ajab Shahar,” under construction as
this book goes to press.
23. Bhajan: Satguru ne bhāng pilāī.
24. Bhajan: Pī le amīras dhārā gagan meṇ jhaḍī lagī.

25. Dalit-Bahujan refers to a modern political alliance of the castes that orthodox
Brahmanism marked as untouchable or defined as Shudra, the fourth varṇa
category whose members were born only to serve the upper three varṇas.
26. See Reagon 2001 and W. Martin 2005. From the former: “In the vortex of
the struggle, the personal and the social were indeed political. While the
Movement obviously fought over the public and tangible, it also concerned
itself with the private and interior landscapes of black people’s lives. It con-
cerned itself with the affective, the emotional, and the psychological. As the
singing preachers always want to know from their audience: ‘How do you
feel?’ Part of their charge is to help people ‘feel’ better, if only for a moment.
In fact, nurturing the ‘soul’ is absolutely vital cultural as well as social
work” (50).
27. On Begampura, see Omvedt 2008, 106–7, and introduction: “The bhakti radi-
cal, Sant Ravidas (c. 1450–1520), was the first to formulate an Indian version
of utopia in his song ‘Begumpura.’ ‘Begumpura,’ the ‘city without sorrow,’ is
a casteless, classless society; a modern society, one without a mention of tem-
ples; an urban society as contrasted with Gandhi’s village utopia of Ram Rajya.
‘Begumpura’ describes a land with no taxes, toil, or harassment, where there is
no hierarchy but all are equal. Finally, calling himself a ‘tanner now set free,’ he
proclaims that he wanders freely with his friends: the right to walk anywhere in a
settlement, city or village is a unique matter for dalits.” See also c hapter 4 above,
section on “That Country.”
28. This song had previously been adapted for use in the labor movement of the
1930s: “The union is behind us, we shall not be moved.” “Sweet Chariot: A History
of the Spirituals” is a website (accessed August 2013) built largely out of Arthur
Jones’s work. One page <http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/freedom/civil.cfm> has a
chart showing examples of changes made “From Slave Spiritual to Civil Rights
Movement Freedom Song.” The site also lists other sources on music in the civil
rights movement.
29. These lyrics have been extracted from various recordings that I have listened to.
30. Shabnam comments that many people have expressed anxiety about politically
charged scenes. Friendly viewers might say, “The film was great, but why did you
have to put in the Ayodhya part and the Wagah part? How are they relevant?” She
showed the film in Godhra, where the 2002 Gujarat communal violence began
when fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims were killed in a railway car fire. There, she said,
viewers hated the film and attacked it in her presence as offensively anti-Hindu.
However, the overall response to the film among viewers in India and abroad has
been overwhelmingly positive.
31. In this connection I’d like to mention two great artists whom I’ve come to know
in the course of this project—the singer Shubha Mudgal and the painter Ghulam
Mohammed Sheikh—committed to struggles against communalism and caste

oppression among other causes, and unafraid of “the religious idiom.”
32. Krishna Nath’s comments are translated from a Hindi conversation that was
captured on video by Shabnam Virmani but not used in any of her four docu-
mentary films..
33. This is not accurate. When smallpox disappeared people attributed other dis-
eases to the goddess and found ways to keep her relevant. See Ferrari 2007, 2009.
34. Hear this in Florence Reece’s voice at <http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Nzudto-FA5Y> and in Pete Seeger’s recording at <http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=msEYGql0drc>.
35. Bhajan: Karnā re hoy.
36. Bhajan: Kyoṇ bhūlīgī ṭhāro des.
37. Bhajan: Man lāgo mero yār fakīrī meṇ.
38. Bhajan: Binā chandā re binā bhāṇ.
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Index
Poems/songs by Kabir that are translated and discussed in the text are not identi-
fied in a consistent way throughout the book. A list is provided under “bhajans—
first lines.” Page numbers with t or f indicate entries in tables/figures.
Ādi Granth (also known as Guru Granth on the Granthāvalī, 126–127, 128,
Sāhib) 143–144
classification in, 152 on Marx, 353, 356, 436n15
compared to oral traditions in on the mutual dependence of inner
Rajasthan, 406–407n15 and outer, 361–362
and the Goindval Pothis. See on Ramanand, 427n26
Goindval Pothis on religion and spirituality in Kabir,
Kabir’s poetry inscribed in, 5, 75, 361–362, 436n21
88–89, 94–95, 123, 136, 146 on the value of songs not found in
sectarian methods of, 88–89, 127, 130, manuscripts, 130–131, 414n25
406–407n15 Aisī mhārī prīt nibhāvajo, “Stay true to
and Sikh views of the authentic Kabir, my love, oh Ram”
88–89, 406–407n15 in Shabnam’s first CD set, 409n33
as source for Shastri's singer’s alteration of lines in, 409n33
Mahābījak, 411n6 translated, 194–195
suno used in the signature by poets Ali, Mukhtiyar, 70, 89, 107, 418–419n15
in, 399n2 Ambedkar, B.R.
Agrawal, Purushottam, 124, 142, 435n12 biographical details, 262
Blind Willie Johnson compared with Buddhist conversion, 262,
Kabir by, 352 367, 432n22
Callewaert criticized by, 124–126, 130 inspirational example of, 21, 260,
Dharamvir criticized by, 125, 427n26 262–263, 283, 306, 382, 387,
Europe-derived “colonial modernity” 390, 394 (see also Ambedkar
and Indian “vernacular moder- manch in Dewas)
nity” differentiated by, 129–131 posters of, 21, 259f6.2
450 Index
Ambedkar manch in Dewas, 262, 382 Barthwal, P.D., The Nirguna

anahad (boundless), waves of sound School of Hindi Poetry, 127,
suggested by, 2–3 420n26, 430n13
anahad nād (unstruck/boundless Behl, Aditya, 73, 405n1
sound), 2, 37–38, 90, 169, 308 Bender, Courtney, 435n11
Anahad garje concerts (see SAHMAT) Bhagavad-gītā
and Nirbhay nirgun gun re gāūgā, and adhyātma, 355
37, 308 Dalit critique of, 367
political criticism of, 363, 380 irreverently treated in a bhajan sung
Anurag Sāgar (Ocean of Love) by Narayanji, 295
and the Bījak ranked by the renunciation harmonized with social
Dharmadasis, 319, 339 engagement in, 366
and Dharamdas, 326, 431–432n21 bhajans
and “false” panths, 420n26, 430n13 Delhi bazaar bhajan collection
Ayaz, Fariduddin (Farid), 107 of, 85–86
Maulā maulā performed in Gorakhnath bhajans, 56, 183–184
Malwa and in “Had-anhad/ handwritten and unpublished collec-
Bounded-Boundless,” 70 tions of, 77–78, 92, 261 (see also
Maulā maulā performed on the Kabir Prahladji’s handwritten bhajan
Project CD, 96 notebook)
on non-scholarly depth of knowledge historically sung with
about Kabir, 129 alterations, 405n7
kīrtan contrasted with, 84
Babri mosque/masjid, 254, 257, published collections (see Ādi
264, 348, 378–379, 387, Granth; Bījak; Callewaert,
433–434nn2, 5 Winand; Dvivedi, Hazariprasad;
Mandir-masjid song, 296 Kabīr; Kabīr Granthāvalī;
bagulā (heron). See herons Mahābījak; Sen, Kshitimohan;
bāhar and bhītar (outside and inside) Tagore)
Agrawal, Purushottam on, 361–362 and sākhīs (couplets), 154
“In this body” phrase in bhajans, 40, Shilnath’s collection of songs in the
171, 183–184 Nath anthology, 93–94
jal meṇ kumbh kumbh mẹ jal, bāhar spirituals compared with, 369–370,
bhītar pānī, 345 373–376
Nath, Krishna on, 379–380 bhajans—first lines
Patel, Suresh on, 271 Ab ke bachāī le merī mā, “Save me
Bailenson, Jeremy, 243 mother,” 173–174
Bamaniya, Kaluram, 24, 71, 96–97, Aisā deśh hāmarā, “My country is like
107, 195–197, 200–201, 298f6.5, this,” 189
304–306, 310, 389–390, 393 Aisī khetī kījai, “Plow your fields like
interviewed by the author, 299–302 this,” 31–32, 402n13
Index 451
Aisī mhārī prīt nibhāvajo, “Stay true to Kahāṇ se āyā, kahāṇ jāoge, “Where
my love,” 194–195, 409n33 did you come from? Where are
Aivī aivī sen, “Such signs,” 153 you going?,” 39–40, 160–161
Anagaḍhiyā deva, “God without Kaī ḍhūnḍhtī phiro mhārī helī, “My
form,” 43 dear friend, what are you seek-
Begam kī gam kar le, “Nowhere, go ing?” 39, 42–43, 427n20
there,” 186–187 Karnā re hoy, “There’s something
Bhāv nagarī, “The city of love,” 81, you’re supposed to do,” 184, 396
192–193 Ketā jājo jī bhalā bhāī, “Go tell them,
Bheḍā hai par miltā nāhin, “It’s with good brother,” 172–173
you but you can’t find it,” 190 Koī mat chheḍo re, meṇ divānā nām kā,
Binā chandā re binā bhāṇ, “No moon, “Don’t mess with me! I’m mad
no sun,” 398–399 with the name,” 197
Chalo hamārā des, “Come to my Kōi suntā hai, “Someone is listening,”
country,” 65 37, 155
Eklā mat chhoḍjo, “Don’t leave me Kyoṇ bhūlīgī ṭhāro des, “Why have
alone,” 63–64 you forgotten your country,” 187,
Ghūnghaṭ ke phat khol, “Open your 292, 396–397
veil,” 90 Lagan kaṭhin hai, “Holding fast is dif-
Guru sam dātā koī nahīṇ, “There’s no ficult,” 99–100, 374
giver like the guru,” 157, 427n21 Laharī anahad uṭhe ghaṭ bhītar,
Gyān kī jaḍiyāṇ, “A root of wisdom,” “Boundless waves are rising in
198, 417n3 my body,” 2–3, 37–38
Hameṇ sāhib se milnā hai, “I’m on Man lāgo mero yār fakīrī meṇ, “This
my way to meet the lord,” 87, mind, my friend, has learned
199, 374 to love owning nothing,” 96,
Ham pardesī panchhī, “I’m a bird 195–196, 397–398, 406n9
from another country,” 94, 188 Man mast huā, “The heart is over-
Har har mārūngā nishāno sadhu choṭ joyed,” 196–197, 410n40
hai āsmān kī, “I’ll shoot and Mhārā satguru baniyā bhediyā, “My
wound the sky,” 135 true guru has pierced through
Jāg musāfir jāg, “Wake up, traveler, me,” 158–159, 246–247
wake up,” 91 Nirbhay nirguṇ, “Fearless, formless,”
Jāgrat rah re, “Stay awake,” 179–180 37, 308, 402n19, 418–419n15
Jā jo jā jo re bhāī, “Go, go, my brother, Panchhiḍā bhāī, “Oh bird, my brother,”
go,” 193–194, 1–2, 100, 167, 269, 418–419n15
Jāo nugurī, “Go, you who lived with- Pī le amīras dhārā gagan meṇ jhaḍī lagī,
out a guru,” 48, 178–179 “Drink! A cascade of nectar pours
Jhīnī chadariyā, “Subtle cloth,” from the sky,” 57, 169, 198, 365
167–168, 185 Rām rame soī gyānī, “When Ram
Jo tū āyā gagan manḍal se, “If you come plays inside you, you’re wise,”
from the dome of the sky,” 25, 97 29, 162
452 Index
bhajans—first line (cont.) Ambedkar’s conversion to, 262, 283,

Sāhib ne bhāng pilāī, “The lord gave 364, 432n22
me a marijuana drink,” 87, 271, ascetic withdrawal and social engage-
427n22 ment as competing calls, 366
Santo dekhahu jag baurānā, “Saints, author’s practice of, 97, 158, 383
I see the world is mad,” 274– Dalits and, 262, 283, 367
275, 316, 434n6 Dogen, 221
Santo jīvat hī karo āsha, “Seekers, Pema Chodron, 352, 357–358
fulfill your hopes while you’re and PT’s U.S. tour, 158–159
alive,” 283 Shantideva, 352, 358–359
Satguru āngan āya, “When the true Tibetan Buddhist rituals, 342
guru entered my courtyard,” 44
Thārā bhariyā samand māhī hīrā, “In Callewaert, Winand
your deep ocean a jewel,” 85–86 on the Ādi Granth’s influence on oral
Tū kā tū, “You, only you,” 27, 185 traditions, 406–407n15
Uḍ jāegā hans akelā, “It will fly away Agrawal’s critique of,
alone, the swan,” 61–62 124–126, 427n26
Yā ghaṭ bhītar “In this body,” 40, 153, Kabir textual scholarship of, 117–118,
171, 403n23, 406n14 120–126, 128, 131, 412n12,
Yoṇ sansār, “This world,” 59–60, 86, 413n16, 414n22
180–181, 406n11 on textual indications of
Yuṇ hī man samajhāve, “Teach your music, 405n7
mind like this,” 101–102, 164–165 Carothers, J.C., 213
Zarā halke gāḍī hānko, “Move your cassettes
cart along lightly,” 67, 265, disappearance from the market, 105, 110
313–314 featuring artists other than PT, 55, 56,
Bhanwari Devi (Rajasthani singer), 85, 415n36
107–108 featuring PT, 24, 25, 51, 53, 55,
Bharti, Chhotu, 270–273, 374, 378 56–57, 103–104, 144, 265, 270,
Bhopal 298, 331
Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad (ALKP) in, influence on oral tradition, 6, 16, 74,
19, 22, 51, 133, 363 78, 104, 109, 207, 260, 265, 302
gas tragedy in, 257 Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr (PT’s first
Bījak, 75, 78, 85, 94–95, 114–116, 121, 126, cassette), 270
136, 147–148, 187, 319, 339, 343, caste
412n13, 426n11, 427n29, 427n30 Agrawal on identity politics, 125
Black Church. See gospel music; Negro Dalits, 5, 13, 29–30, 42, 44, 49,
spirituals 161–162, 251, 259f6.2, 262–263,
Blascovich, Jim, 243 265, 269, 278–279, 283, 367,
Brown, Charlotte, 234–239 390, 411n6, 424n3, 433n1,
Bryant, Kenneth, 118–119, 120, 401n16 437n25, 437n27
Buddhism, 183, 347, 355, 391–392 Dalits’ names and, 299
Index 453
Delmia, Narayan Singh on, 279, presided over by Dharamdasi Kabir

292–295, 331 Panth mahants, 280, 325–328,
and Eklavya’s Kabir manch, 249, 329, 332
251–265, 267, 273, 275, 294 traced to the Jñān gudari, 432n27
four varṇas (classes), 142–143, in two traditions of Kabir Panth,
307, 418n12 324–328
and the Kabir Panth, 280, 318, Vivek Das’s reforms,
429–430n11 338–340, 432n28
Kabir’s social criticism and, 5, 7, 9, Chaytor, H.L., 210
21, 159–162, 249–251 Chenamaru, 86, 199
low status and poverty of Kabir sing- Chhattisgarh
ers in Malwa, 201–202 Kabir Panth in (see Dharamdasi Kabir
nirguṇ bhakti and oppressed castes, Panth; Prakashmuni Nam Sahab)
40–45, 96, 278–279, 403n26 melā (fair, gathering) attended by
in Prahladji’s life and Kabir interpre- author in, 328–329, 330, 429n7
tations, 5, 13, 23, 26, 28–30, 36, population demographics, 429n7
38, 42, 44–47, 84, 145 Chodron, Pema, 352, 357–358
premodern yogis and sadhus’ views Choudhury, Anil, 309, 320–321, 322
of, 366 clay pot as a metaphor for the human
Ramanand and, 277–279 body. See ghaṭ (clay pot)
Shabnam’s discussion with Tiwari, communalism, 254–255, 257, 264,
362–363 269, 280, 296, 316, 347, 378,
Sharma, Dinesh on, 304–306 387, 425n7, 430–431n16, 433n2,
shudra class of Kabir, 307 437–438nn30, 31
Sisodiya, Hiralal on, 283–285 conversations documented by the
stanza about a carved statue on, author, individual conversa-
42–43, 161–162 tion partners. See Bharti,
Syag, R.N. on, 255, 260, 303 Chhotu; Brown, Charlotte;
and tambūrā playing, 55, 410n38 Delmia, Narayan Singh; Macy,
Chauhan, Bhairu Singh, 55–56, 66, 302 Joanna; Naim; Patel, Suresh;
chaukā āratī rituals Rai, Alok; Rikhi,Vipul; Shastri,
criticism and debate over, 274, 282, Gangasharan; Syag, R.N.
287, 335–336 couplets. See sākhīs (couplets) of Kabir
ekottarī chaukā āratī described, 329
Gangasharan Shastri’s views of, 338 Dadu Panth manuscript collections, 75,
Kabir Chaura use of, 324–325, 338– 121–122, 147, 152, 412–413n14
340, 343, 432n28 Granthāvalī, 126–127, 130, 152
origin story in the Anurag Sāgar, Panchvāṇī, 75, 126
327, 339 Sarvāngī, 74, 126
PT’s innovations, 337 Dalit-Bahujans. See caste, Dalits
PT’s performance of, 333–334, 334f7.1, Das, Gangasharan. See Shastri,
336, 432n23 Gangasharan
454 Index
Das, Shyamsundar, Kabir textual schol- Nath Panth center in (see Shīlnāth
arship of, 120–121, 126 Dhūnī (Nath Panth center
Das, Vivek in Dewas)
biographical details, 338 Dhanya kabīr as a controversial song,
and chaukā āratī rituals, 144, 416n38
338–340, 432n28 Dharamdas, 91–93, 96–97, 116, 144, 194,
Dharamdasis criticized by, 408n24, 431–432n21
338–340, 432n28 Dharamdasi Kabir Panth, 92, 144, 187,
Kabir Bhavan built by, 338 280, 287, 309–310, 319, 325–326
PT invited to perform Kabir Anurag Sāgar (Ocean of Love) sacred
Jayanti, 341 book of, 319, 326, 339, 420n26,
as a reformer, 338–339, 343, 429n10 431–432n21
support of Choudhury’s and Bandhavgarh, 59, 170, 326, 329,
struggles, 321 429n7, 431–432n21
Dehaene, Stanislas, 422n14 and the chaukā āratī ritual, 326–329
Delmia, Narayan Singh (Narayanji), 92, leader of (see Prakashmuni
131–133, 197, 200–201, 267–268, Nam Sahab)
289f6.4, 310, 378, 427n24 rivalry within lineage, 430n13
on the chaukā āratī controversy, 335 See also Das, Vivek, Dharamdasis
and the Kabir bhajan evam vichar criticized by
manch, 24, 257, 261, 263, 259– Dharamvir, Dr., 125, 278,
260, 280–283, 288–289, 291, 427n26, 433n1
292–295, 331 Dharma Shastras, 366, 418n12
profile of, 288–298 Dharwadker, Vinay
on Ramanand and Kabir, 279 Kabir identified as a community of
on social-spiritual split, 311 authors by, 6, 145
Delvoye, Nalini, 92, 407–408n20 Kabir textual dissemination
deśh (country) charted by, 78
as a theme in Kabir’s poetry, 152, divānā
187–190 as a term for madness (see madness)
individual bhajans on. See bhajans— and Urdu musical-poetic forms, 117
first lines, Aisā deśh hāmarā, divine madness. See madness
“My country is like this”; Chalo drunken joy, songs about, 195–199, 276,
hamārā des, “Come to my coun- 365, 434n7
try”; Ham pardesī panchhī, “I’m Dvivedi, Hazariprasad, 97, 125, 278,
a bird from another country”; 399–400n5, 403n23, 408n25,
Kyoṇ bhūlīgī ṭhāro des, “Why have 427n26, 433n1
you forgotten your country”
Dewas Eklavya bhajan booklet. See Soī pīr hai jo
education NGO in (see Eklavya NGO) jāne par pīr (bhajan collection)
Kumar Gandharva, home of (see Eklavya Kabir manch, 11, 15, 24,
Kumar Gandharva) 251–254, 257–66
Index 455
Dinesh Sharma as organizer of, Lakoff on the Embodiment

257–260, 259f6.2, 273–275 Revolution, 243–244
Hindu identity of musicians live embodied presence in oral per-
in, 425n7 formance, 4, 78, 205, 211–212,
Hiralal Sisodiya’s involvement (see 233–234, 237–239, 246–248
Sisodiya, Hiralal) naśhā (see drunken joy)
Kaluram Bamaniya’s involvement, Ramanujan on bodily location of
298–302 texts, 80–81
Narayan Singh Delmia, involvement emptiness (śhūnya, śhūnyatā)
(see Delmia, Narayan Singh, in bhajans, 37, 90, 138, 152, 165, 166,
and the Kabir bhajan evam 169, 189, 308, 398
vichar manch) as Kabir’s core truth according to
PT’s involvement, 24, 55, 103, 265, Tiwari, 136
276–278, 281–282 and ritual, 342
scenes from, 273–283
table 6.1, 281t6.1 Finnegan, Ruth, 206–208
urban activists in, 266–273 Foley, John Miles
Eklavya NGO OT (Oral Tradition) and IT (Internet)
Ambedkar manch organized by (see homology claimed by, 228–232
Ambedkar manch in Dewas) Pathways Project website, 207–208,
and Dinesh Sharma (see Sharma, 209, 228–232, 422n6
Dinesh) refutation of the thesis of the Great
farewell event for the author, 62–64 Divide between oral and written,
history of, 251–254 207–208
Kabir manch organized by (see freedom songs. See Negro spirituals
Eklavya Kabir manch)
and science education, 251–252, Gangasharan Shastri. See Shastri,
256–257 Ganga Sharan
and Syag-bhāi, 255–257, 302–304 Gandhi, Indira, 1975–77 Emergency, 376
transcription of bhajans from oral ghaṭ (clay pot)
tradition, 200, 265–266 chaukā āratī ritual related to, 339–340
See also Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr examples in poetry, 2–3, 37–40, 97,
(bhajan collection) 171, 185, 282–283, 403n23
embodiment jal meṇ kumbh kumbh mẹ jal, “pot in
body as theme in poetry, 166–171 water water in pot,” 345
disembodiment in electronic com- as a metaphor for the body in Kabir
munication, 16, 109–111, 232–234, poems, 39, 145, 166–167, 362
242–246 ghaṭ bhītar “within the body”
and divānā (see madness) Agrawal on, 362
ghaṭ bhītar “within the body” (see ghaṭ and the metaphor of the clay pot (see
(clay pot); ghaṭ bhītar) ghaṭ (clay pot))
“In this body” phrase in bhajans, 40, chaukā ritual within the body,
171, 183–184 340, 432n27
456 Index
ghazal style songs Guru Granth Sāhib. See Ādi Granth

and globalization, 16 gurus
influence on oral Kabir, 117 of Ambedkar, 262
Tumhe yād ho ke na yād ho, 116 author’s connection to theme of,
Urdu poetic form, 412n7 158–159
Gītā. See Bhagavad-gītā in bhajans, 20, 25, 27, 29, 34, 37,
Glennie, Evelyn, 225–226 39, 43, 44, 48, 51, 62, 87, 98,
globalization 99–100, 132, 135, 138, 150, 154,
antidemocratic potential of the inter- 156–159, 160, 167, 170, 175, 183,
net, 410–411nn41–42 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 192–193,
democratizing effects of digital tech- 198, 199, 246–247, 272, 276–
nology, 109, 111 277, 292, 346, 365, 374, 396,
and media, 78, 106–111, 207–208 427n21, 436n17
oral networks in the sixteenth cen- Eklavya manch discussion of,
tury, 103, 410n39 274, 276–277, 281t6.1, 282,
of PT, 22, 66–67, 103–105 285–287, 310
and “spiritual but not religious,” Guru Nanak. See Nanak
351–352 “guru’s greatness” as theme in Kabir
substance of the local affected by, 16 poetry and song, 152, 154–155,
Goindval Pothis, 95, 123, 146–147, 401n12 156–159, 249–250, 261, 269
Golwalkar, M.S., 350 Hiralalji and, 285–287, 310, 330
Gorakhnath as human beings or the divine pres-
affinity with Kabir, 91, 93, 114, 402n5 ence within oneself, 156, 158,
bhajans, 56, 183–184 162, 403n22
city of Gorakhpur named after, of Kabir, 5 (see also Ramanand)
92, 162 Kabir as satguru, 144, 157, 255
and Nath Panth, 93, 125 in Kabir Panth, 15, 144, 160, 258,
poems in the anthology of 270, 280, 309, 319, 324–327,
Shilnath, 94 329, 332, 336–337, 343,
Shūnya ghar shahar attributed to, 91 403n22, 432n28
gospel music Kaluramji and, 300–302, 310
Blind Willie Johnson compared with in Mahābārata, devotion of Eklavya to
Kabir, 352 guru, 252–253
composed by Charles A. Tindley, 376 Narayanji and, 291, 295, 310, 335
and PT’s American tour, 66 of PT, 33–34, 36, 54, 175, 199
Granthāvalī. See Kabīr Granthāvalī PT as a, 21, 51, 55–56, 57–59, 301,
Gupta, Anu 332, 337
and the author, 307, 311, 313, 428n34 PT on, 34, 96, 145, 158, 186, 336–338,
and Dinesh Sharma’s final days, 341, 409n31, 432n23
311–313 Shabnam on Tiwari as guru, 132
and Eklavya, 251–252 Sikh gurus, 95, 127, 147, 408n23,
and Narayanji, 294 414n21 (see also Nanak)
Index 457
haṃsa and bagulā. See heron/crane Hindu nationalism, 254, 350, 425-n7,
(bagulā); swan (haṃsa) 433n2, 434n9
Hawley, J.S., 142, 400n8, 405n4 Honko, Lauri, 120
on authorship in bhakti poetry, 411n3 Horowitz, Seth
on Dvivedi’s “brahminical bias,” discussed by author with Charlotte
427n26 Brown, 234, 236
on the Fatehpur manuscript, hearing identified as the universal
123–124, 146 sense, 222–224, 232, 423n16
historical approach to Surdas manu- on music, 225–226, 236
scripts, 118, 125, 405n4, 413n16 Horstmann, Monika,
on Kabir’s literacy as unknown, 412–413n14, 427n26
399–400n5
on the speed of urban networks in Ilaiah, Kancha, 367
the sixteenth century, 410n39 inside and outside. See bāhar
on textual histories, 400n9 and bhītar
Hayles, Katherine, 244–245
Henry, Edward O., 93, 402n5 Jainism
Henshaw, John, 222–223, 422n15 and the Burhanpur śhākhā of the
heron/crane (bagulā) Kabir Panth, 430n12
and swan (haṃsa) compared, 26, influence on manuscript collection
32, 402n8 and libraries, 122, 412–413n14
symbolism, 418n13 and Kabir’s equal-opportunity cri-
Hinduism tique of religious hypocrites, 39,
Dalit-Bahujans distinguished 160, 355
from, 367 Rajasthan influence of, 412–413n14
Das, Vivek’s criticism of paurāniktā, and renunciation, 366
339–340
and Eklavya Kabir manch, Kabir Chaura branch of Kabir Panth
282, 425n7 and Bījak (see Bījak)
and Kabir Panth, 280, 316–318, chaukā āratī used by, 324–325, 338–
324, 338 340, 343, 432n28
and Kaluram, 96, 300 history and locations of, 93, 319, 321
and Narayanji, 291–292, 295, 296 leaders (see Das, Vivek; Shastri,
and PT, 30, 158, 409n31 Gangasharan)
and renunciation, 366 and the Mahābījak (see Mahābījak;
selective appropriation of Kabir, 364 Shastri, Gangasharan)
and temples, 42, 156 rituals of, 324–325
Hindu-Muslim connections, 5, 26, 35, Kabir couplets. See sākhīs (couplets)
38, 39, 46, 96, 124, 142–143, of Kabir
160, 195, 250, 254–255, 257, Kabīr Granthāvalī
280, 292, 315–316, 347, 416n42, Agrawal on, 126–127, 128, 143–144
428–429n2 Das edition of, 121, 126, 152
458 Index
Kabīr Granthāvalī (cont.) and gurus, 15, 144, 160, 258, 270,
Rajasthani manuscript base of, 121, 280, 309, 319, 324–327, 329, 332,
126–127 336–337, 343, 403n22, 432n28
and sectarian bias, 126–128 Hinduization of, 280, 316–318, 324, 338
Kabir manch. See Eklavya Kabir manch Hiralalji’s criticism of, 285–288, 330
Kabir mandalīs and Kabir mandalīs in Malwa, 258, 280
demographics of, 265 and Kabir’s manifestation on a lotus
in Eklavya Kabir manch, 24, 256–257, on Lahartara Pond, 144, 309, 318,
259–260, 264, 273 320, 342, 416n38, 429n10
explanations of bhajans by, 137, Kaluramji’s relationship to, 96, 300–302
273–274 and Mahābījak, 114–116
farewell event for author, 62–64 Mangaldas Sahib (mahant of Dewas),
organized for Kabir manch by 26, 49, 280, 300–302
Narayanji, 291, 294, 297 Narayanji’s criticism of, 331, 335
at Kumar Gandharva’s cremation, PT and Shabnam attacked by,
138–139 309–310, 431n17
led by Ram Prasad in Dhunsi village, PT’s relationship to, 33–34, 36, 53–54,
394–395 58, 84, 145, 158, 332–333, 334f7.1,
of Malwa, 23–24, 255, 258 336–338, 341
of older men, 200–201 seats (gaddī)/branches (śhākhā), 319
poverty and low caste status of those Allahabad-based (Pārakhī) branch,
in Malwa, 201–202 33, 430n12
PT’s hosting of, 24, 49–50, Burhanpur-based branch, 430n12
53–55, 104 Chhattisgarh-based branch, 319 (see
and the Singaji mandalī in also Dharamdasi Kabir Panth;
Dinesh’s village, 304, 306, Prakashmuni Nam Sahab)
425–426n8 Kharsiya-based branch, 430n14
Syag-bhāi on, 256, 260, 263, 303 Varanasi-based branch, 93, 319
of women, 289, 393–394 (see also Kabir Chaura; Shastri,
and the younger generation, 69–70, Gangasharan)
107, 289 See also chaukā āratī rituals;
Kabir Panth Kabir Chaura; Dharamdasi
and Ambedkar’s parents, 262 Kabir Panth
and Bījak (see Bījak) Kabir poetry
and caste distinctions, 280, 318, classification of, 151–156
429–430n11 collections of (see Ādi Granth; Eklavya
censorship of Prakash Kant’s intro- NGO, transcription of bhajans
duction, 261, 309 from oral tradition; Goindval
Choudhury attacked by, 320–321, 323 Pothis; Kabīr Granthāvalī;
and the Eklavya Kabir manch, 280, Mahābījak; Nath anthology;
281t6.1, 297–298 Prahladji’s handwritten bhajan
Index 459
notebook; Sen, Kshitimohan; and social activism today, 306–307,

Tagore) 308–309, 310–311, 347–348, 350,
computer analysis of, 148, 363–365, 366, 377–380,
416–417n44 386–389, 392–395
oceanic pool of images, 85–86, 89, 91 Kabir textual scholarship, text-editing
Kabir Project based in Bangalore approaches, 118–119
author’s association with, 12–13 Kabir Yatras (Malwa and Rajasthan Kabir
films, audio CDS and bilingual books Journeys), 102, 106, 107, 108
produced by, 46, 54–55, 66, kahe kabīr suno bhāī sadho, “Kabir says,
68, 71, 101–102, 105, 106, 129, listen Seekers.” See Kabir’s
378, 405n40 signature line
initiation of, 425n7 Kaluram. See Bamaniya, Kaluram
and Shabnam Virmani, 102, 425n7 Kant, Prakash
Kabir says listen. See Kabir’s introduction to book of bhajan texts
signature line describing Kabir as human, 264,
Kabir’s life and identity, 5 267, 309–310
described as a community of authors on Kabir’s birth in a Muslim
by Vinay Dharwadker, 145 family, 309
myths and legends of, 144, 306, 317, and Patel, Suresh, 268
318, 339, 401n11, 429n10 on usefulness of Kabir for social jus-
and Ramanand, 274, 276–279 tice work, 306–307
(see also Ramanand) King, Martin Luther
in play of Shekhar Sen, 321–323 “I Have a Dream” speech, 395
in television serial of Anil spirituality and social engagement
Choudhury, 320 combined by, 356, 368, 369
Kabīr Smārak Sevā aur Shodh kīrtan, 84, 86
Sansthān (Kabir Memorial Knight, Lisa, 91
Institute for Service and Komkali, Bhuvan
Research), 48–49 on ghazal and other Urdu influences
Kabir songs. See bhajans—first lines on oral Kabir, 117, 142
Kabir’s signature line (“Kabir says”), 1, grandson of Kumar Gandharva,
2, 80, 140, 411n6 116, 415n36
altering of, 82–84, 86, 91–93, 98, 144, Mahābījak viewed as inauthentic
405n7, 408n21 by, 116
authority of, 140 Komkali, Kalapini 116, 415n36
and Nath bhajans, 93–94, 408n21 Kothari, Komal, 132
suno used in the signature by poets in Kripal, Jeffrey, 435n11
the Ādi Granth, 399n2 Kumar Gandharva
Kabir’s social criticism bhajan embossed on a mirror
featured in his poetry, 5, 9, 36, 38–39, discovered by, 60
159–162, 251, 282 biographical details, 11, 82, 138–139
460 Index
Kumar Gandharva (cont.) Lukacs, George, 434n8

cremation of, 138–139 Lunyakhedi village, 11, 19, 28–29, 42,
disciples of, 116, 138 56–57, 70–71, 104, 108, 150, 249,
Gorakhnath bhajans sung by, 91, 389, 404n33
183–184
Ham pardesī panchhī sung by, 188 McLuhan, Marshall
Nirbhay nirguṇ guṇ re gāūgā sung by, critiques of, 212–213, 218–219
308, 418–419n15 cultures essentialized as either oral or
and Shīlnāth Dhūnī, 60, 93–94, 138, literate by, 212–213
408nn21, 27, 415n36, 416n37 The Gutenberg Galaxy, 14, 208–210,
Shūnya ghar shahar sung by, 219–220, 422n7, 424n24
91, 408n21 on media, 206, 208–210, 226,
song text variations, 91, 113, 233, 422n7
408nn21, 22 and secondary orality, 227
Suntā hai guru gyānī sung by, 82 Macy, Joanna, 391–392
Tiwari, Kapil on, 137–140 madness
Uḍ jāegā hans akelā sung by, 60–62 divānā as a term for, 189–190,
Kumarji. See Kumar Gandharva 197, 373
Kumar, Sunil, 307 and emptiness, 165
and Rai’s reference to the Kabir
Lagan kaṭhin hai mere bhāī (bhajan) poem santo dekhat jag baurānā,
author’s effort to translate, 98–100 348, 434n6
spiritual quest of civil rights activists Mahābījak
compared with, 374 Urdu poetry added to, 116–117 (see also
Lakoff, George, 224, 238–239, Shastri, Gangasharan)
242–244 Malwa
Lee, Joel, 83 location of this study, 1, 11, 19–20
The Lives of Others, film by Von Malwa Kabir Yātrā, 70, 102, 106–109
Donnersmarck, 16, 360–361, 379 repertoires in, 14, 149–151
Lofton, Kathryn, 435n11 mandalīs. See Kabir mandalīs
Lord, Albert Marti, Jose, 249, 424n1
colonial framing of cultures based on Martin, Nancy, 400n8, 433n1
theories of, 206 Marvadi, Muralala (Kutchi singer), 70,
oral-formulaic theory of composition, 89, 89, 91, 107, 406n9, 408n22
85, 153, 209 Marx, Karl
The Singer of Tales, 14, 205, Agrawal on religious and spiritual
206, 421n2 views of, 353, 356, 436nn14, 15
Lorenzen, David, 41, 142, 147, 279, aversion to religion, 345–346,
317–319, 324–325, 340, 352, 348, 368
400n9, 401n11, 403n26, 411n5, Rai, Alok’s discussion of, 386–387
428n1, 429nn3, 10, 430nn12, 13, Mirabai
432nn26, 27, 432n28, 433n1 and feminists, 386
Index 461
Kabir refrains attributed to, and PT, 33, 84, 338

91, 406n9 songs associated with Kabir of, 91–93,
Kumarji’s name for an elderly Dewas 138, 278, 402n5, 408n21
singer, 415n36 Negro spirituals
and low caste people, 400n8, Kabir bhajans compared with,
411n6, 433n1 347, 369, 370, 373–375, 376,
popularity of, 251 377, 379
PT’s singing of songs of, 23 King, Martin Luther on, 368–369
moon and sun motif. See bhajans-first meanings in American history of,
lines, Aivī aivī, Binā chanda, Yā 368–377
ghaṭ bhītar oral tradition and fluidity of texts,
Mudgal, Madhup, 138–139 371–373, 376, 437n28
Mukhia, Harbans, 252–253 Niranjani Panth of Rajasthan,
Muslims and the Muslim community 412–413n14
and communal conflict, 144, 254–255, nirguṇ
280, 292, 315–317, 362 (see also Barthwal’s book on the nirgun school,
Babri mosque/masjid) 127, 420n26, 430n13
Kabir’s association with, 5, 316, 425n7 and the body, 168, 170–171
and Kabir’s egalitarianism, 39, 96, and caste, 40–44, 96, 277–279,
362, 425n7 310–311, 403n26, 404n31
Kabir’s upbringing in a Muslim fam- and Kabir, 2, 6, 20, 23, 152–153, 186,
ily, 5, 279, 309, 316–317, 401n11 189, 193, 250, 277
Muslim singers, 96 (see also Ali, and Kumar Gandharva, 11, 93–94,
Mukhtiyar; Ayaz, Fariduddin 138, 308
(Farid); qawwali style songs) and the lover-beloved theme,
reflected in vocabulary of poems, 26, 89–90, 194
91, 124, 195 poets, 23, 402n5
(see also Gorakhnath)
Nabhadas (author of Bhaktamāl), and saguṇ notions of God, 23, 41–42,
142–143 44, 89, 96
Nagaraj, D.R., 366–367 sects, 33–34, 122, 187, 338 (see also
Naim (Urdu poet in Dewas), 307–308 Dadu Panth; Kabir Panth;
Nanak, Guru, 127, 140, 141, 285, 315–316, Nath Panth; Niranjani Panth;
402n5, 408n23, 428–429n2 Radhasoami Satsang)
Narayanji. See Delmia, Narayan Singh and Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta,
naśhā. See drunken joy 41, 402n31, 421n43
Nath anthology, Shilnath’s collection of non-scholars’ depth of knowledge about
songs in, 93–94 Kabir, 250, 273
Nath, Krishna, 379–380, 438n32 Vijay Kumar, author’s discussion
Nath Panth, 89, 93, 355 with, 104, 409–410n37
center in Dewas (see Shīlnāth Dhūnī) Farid Ayaz on, 129
headquarters (see Gorakhnath) Tiwari, Kapil on, 136–137
462 Index
Novetzke, Christian, 400n8, Tiwari, Kapil on, 133–134

405n2, 411n3 twentieth century scholarship on.
See Finnegan, Ruth; Foley, John
Olivelle, Patrick, 366 Miles; Lord, Albert; McLuhan,
Omvedt, Gail, 433n1, 437n27 Marshall; Ong, Walter; Parry,
Ong, Walter Milman; Sterne, Jonathan
on media and technology, 209 Orsini, Francesca, 91, 407–408n20,
on orality and literacy, 206, 208, 412n10, 412–413n14
212–213
on Plato using writing to criticize Parry, Milman, 205–206
writing, 241 Parveen, Abida, Kabir Album, 96
secondary orality theorized by, 219, 227 Patel, Suresh, 267–272, 298, 378–379,
Sterne’s critique of, 217–219 381, 426n16
oral tradition, 8–9, 14, 199–201 Prahladji. See Tipanya, Prahlad Singh
and canon creation, 82 (Prahladji)
continued vitality of, 242, 251, 376, Prahladji’s handwritten bhajan note-
406–407n15 books, 83f2.1, 83–84, 406n10
and critical editions, 118–120 (see also Prakashmuni Nam Sahab, 49, 326–328,
Callewaert, Winand) 340–341
dichotomizing oral and literate tradi- on caste, 429–430n11
tions, 14, 76, 206, 212–214 melā at Bandhavgarh organized by,
and embodiment, 4, 78, 205, 211–212, 431–432n21
233–234, 237–239, 246–247 Prasad, Bhagirathi, 249–250
historical development of, 116, PT. See Tipanya, Prahlad Singh
119–120 (Prahladji)
mapping of, 76, 91, 119,
407–408n20, 420n28 qawwali style songs, 16, 70, 96, 129
and mediatized transmission, 9, 13–14,
74–75, 78, 103, 105–111, 203–204, Radhasoami Satsang, 33–34, 187, 291,
206, 212, 220, 227, 242 338, 409–410n37
and the oceanic pool of Kabirian Raghavan, V., 416n40
poetic imagery, 85–86, 89, 91 Rai, Alok, 347–350, 379
oral-formulaic theory of composition. interviewed by the author, 386–389
See Lord, Albert Rajasthan, 10
orality theory, introduced, 203–205 Bahadur Singh’s research on oral
Ramanujan, A.K. on, 76–77 Kabir, 113–114
secondary orality, 204, 219, Bhanwari Devi, 107–108
226–228, 237 Dadu Panth in. See Dadu Panth
textual fluidity of Negro spirituals, Fatehpur manuscript, 123
371–373, 376, 437n28 Jain influence in, 412–413n14
and textual spontaneity and dynamism, Kabir Panth in, 92
80–82, 86–89, 101, 405n7, 406n14 Kabir and Sufi poetry, 96
Index 463
and the Malwa region, 11, 19 Reagon, Bernice Johnson, 368–369,

manuscripts of Kabir compositions, 372–373, 376, 437n26
75, 94, 121–122, 123, 126, 128, 146, rekhtā poetic form in Kabir singing,
4121n11,412–413n14 (see also Das, 154, 418n10
Shyamsundar; Kabīr Granthāvalī; Rikhi, Vipul, 392
Strnad, Jaroslav) rural audience, 52f1.1
Meghvāl performers in rural western
part of, 433n1 Sacks, Oliver, 225, 236, 400n6
Mukhtiyar Ali, 70, 89 Sadbhāv Yātrā (Goodwill Journey), 264,
Niranjani Path, 406n9, 412–413n14 276, 379
oral epics of, 400n8 SAHMAT (Safdar Hashmi Memorial
Panchvāṇī poetry collection, 75, 126 Trust), 434n5
Ramdevji devotion in, 30, 110 Anahad garje concerts produced by,
as region where oral Kabir is popu- 348, 387, 434n5
lar, 10, 16, 68, 89, 103, 107, Sahni, Bhisham, 354, 427n17
141, 179, 187–188, 248, 406n9, Sahni, Kiran, 267, 427n17
406–407n15 sākhīs (couplets) of Kabir
Sarvāngī poetry collection, 75, attributed to both Kabir and other
126, 411n6 poets, 91–92, 141
and tambūras, 23, 68 bhajans’ relationship to, 154
vitality of oral tradition in, in conversations about Kabir, 32
406–407n15 Dadu Panthi manuscripts organiza-
Ramanand tion of, 152, 417n6
commentary by PT, 277–278 examples of, 10, 32, 34, 43, 46, 92,
debate over Ramanand and brahmini- 112, 132–133, 141, 156, 162–163,
cal bias, 125, 276–279, 427n26 249, 263–264, 266, 269, 270,
historicity of, 427n26 281, 286, 344, 412n13
and Kabir’s association with examples on love, 190–192
Hinduism, 125, 316 examples on the mind, 162–166
as Kabir’s disciple, 277–278 interpretation by singers,
as Kabir’s father, 279 281–282, 419n23
as Kabir’s guru, 140, 274, 277–278 meaning of sākhī, 140
in Satguru ne bhāng pilāī “The true in North Indian public schools, 5, 30
guru gave me a marijuana painted on temple walls, 49
drink,” 276–278 PT’s interpretation of, 84
Ramanujan, A.K. Sampath, Ram, 107–108
author’s meeting with, 17 Sanchez-Luege, Nicelio, 416–417n44
pool of signifiers for the Rāmāyaṇa, Sangh Parivar, 425n7, 434n9
89, 91, 407n16 Sardana, Arvind
“Who Needs Folklore,” 76–77, and the author, 307, 312, 428n34
80, 401n14 and Eklavya, 251–252, 276, 428n34
Ramdev, 55–56, 110 and Narayanji, 294, 297
464 Index
Sarolia, Dayaram, 104, 302 Shah, Rajula, film on Kabir

and Dinesh Sharma, 304–306, singers, 79–80
314f6.6 Shankara and Advaita philosophy,
interviewed by Shabnam Virmani, 41–42, 200, 404n31, 421n43
55, 56–57 Shantideva, 352, 358–359
on stigma attached to tambūrā Sharma, Dinesh, 259f6.2
playing, 55 co-conducting interviews with the
satī (widow who self-immolates on hus- author, 283, 290
band’s funeral pyre) and Dayaram Sarolia, 314f6.6
controversial verses on, 99, family’s handwritten bhajan
101–102, 418n14 collection, 77, 82
as symbol of courage and Kabir manch organizing and
devotion, 165 documentation, 55, 255–260,
Seeger, Pete, 395, 424n1, 438n34 273–276, 304
Sen, Kshitimohan, 97, 322, 403n23 Kabir manch’s influence on, 297,
Sen, Shekhar (Mumbai classical singer), 304–306
144, 309, 321–323 last days of, 311–314
senses Shastri, Gangasharan, 431n18
and body-mind systems (5–25 catego- on the chaukā āratī ritual, 325,
ries), 151, 417n4 338, 431n18
five senses as a conventional number on editing the Mahābījak, 114–116, 145
of, 221–222, 422n15 Shilnath (Nath yogi master in Malwa)
hearing as the universal sense, anthology of song texts collected by
221–224, 234 (see Nath anthology)
Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad 3.8 on dhūnī devoted to the memory of (see
sound, 203 Shīlnāth Dhūnī)
and orality theory, 14, 78, 204, 215– Shīlnāth Dhūnī (Nath Panth center in
226, 228–229, 232–233, 235–237, Dewas)
240, 246–247 and Kumar Gandharva, 60, 91,
and pratyāhāra (closing the doors of 93–94, 138, 408nn21, 27,
the senses), 366 415nn36, 37
Śhabad nirantar, film by Rajula mirror embossed with an unpub-
Shah, 79-80 lished bhajan at, 60
śhabda (the Word) Shteyngart, Gary, 239–242
akṣhar [written] word contrasted with Siegel, Daniel, 233
by Tiwari, 134 signature lines
inner-outer sound associated with and authenticity, 281–282
ultimate nirguṇ reality, 7, 33, 37, Kabir’s (see Kabir’s signature line
43–44, 58, 112, 145, 169, 399n4 (“Kabir says”))
in the title of Rajula Shah’s film, 79 of poets other than Kabir, 23, 88, 144,
Shabnam. See Virmani, Shabnam 276, 402n5, 406n9, 408n23
Shah, Hitesh, 106–107 Sikh religion
Index 465
Kabir’s poetry inscribed in Ādi Sterne, Jonathan, 203, 215–221, 223

Granth, 5, 67, 75, 88–89, 95, 121, Strnad, Jaroslav, 120–121, 412n11,
123, 147, 151, 397n2, 414n21 416–417n44
legends of founder Guru Nanak, Sufis
315–316, 428–429n2 Alok Rai on the culture of, 347
sacred texts (see Ādi Granth; Goindval Amir Khusrau, 352
Pothis) in the film Had-Anhad/
sectarian bias, 126–127, 147 Bounded-Boundless, 378
Singaji (nirguṇ sant of Madhya invoked against communalism,
Pradesh), 23, 304, 428n36 347–348, 425n7, 434n5
Singaji bhajan mandalī, 306, Kabir related to, 17, 89, 91, 94, 96,
425–426n8 141, 195, 347
Singh, Namvar, 11, 307, 428n39 language and genres of, 195, 263,
Singh, Shukdev, Kabir textual scholar- 407–408n20
ship of, 120–121 musical styles of, 5, 70, 71
Sisodiya, Hiralal, 284f6.3 of Pakistan and Kabir, 91, 141
on the Kabir manch, 274–275, 281–282, Suntā hai guru gyānī
283–285, 288 altered signature of Dinesh Sharma’s
on the Kabir Panth, 285–287, 330 version of, 82–83
Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr (bhajan collection) Kumar Gandharva’s version of,
introduction by Prakash Kant, 264, 82, 415n36
267, 309–310 PT’s version of, 82
title translated, 263–264 Surdas, textual study of, 118–119, 125,
Soī pīr hai jo jāne par pīr (PT’s first 405n4, 413n16
cassette), 270 swan (haṃsa)
songs and heron (bagulā) compared, 28,
Black Church. See gospel music; 32, 402n8
Negro spirituals symbolism, 60–62
of Kabir (see bhajans; bhajans—first Syag-bhāi. See Syag, R.N.
lines; ghazal style songs) Syag, R.N., 256f6.1
of Mirabai (see Mirabai) conversations with author, 255–257,
Muslim singers (see Ali, Mukhtiyar; 260–261, 302–304, 380–385
Ayaz, Fariduddin (Farid); qaw- Eklavya manch involvement, 255,
wali style songs) 260, 262, 263, 302–304
spirituality and Narayanji, 291, 294
Agrawal on, 353–356
author’s definition of, 357–359 Tagore, Rabindranath, 322, 403n23,
differentiated from religion, 351–353, 416–417n44
435n13, 436n14 tambūrā playing
and Marxist/materialist/leftist views, and caste, 55, 410n38
345–346, 348–351, 356, 360–361, and the ektār associated with the old
367, 384–385 Kabir singing tradition, 295
466 Index
tambūrā playing (cont.) life story, 28–36, 47–50, 52–54, 55–59,

and PT, 23, 31, 103, 247 64–66, 68–71, 406n10
by urban fans, 68, 106 mahantship in Kabir Panth , 15,
Tansen (Mughal court musician), 92, 141 58–59, 330, 331–337, 334f7.1, 341,
textual scholarship 343, 405n39
on Kabir, 118–120 (see also Agrawal, meditation experience, 34–39,
Purushottam; Callewaert, 175–176
Winand; Das, Shyamsundar; performing in Bangalore with mandalī
Strnad, Jaroslav; Tiwari, P.N.; and Shabnam Virmani, 12fI.1
Vaudeville, Charlotte) sings with Ashok, 21f1.1
urtext as a focus of, 118–120 song composed in honor of his cas-
Tindley, Charles A., 376 sette “Pī le amīras—Drink This
Tipanya, Ajay (PT’s son and dholak Nectar,” 56–57
player), 45, 52, 67, 70, 109, 171, and the sound of tambūrā, 23,
200–201, 404n33, 408n21 31, 247
research for the Kabir Project, urge to leave his family, 53–54, 174–176
200–201 Tipanya, Shanti (PT’s wife)
Tipanya, Ambaram (PT’s brother), 28, and the author, 13, 61
30, 51–52, 69–70, 84, 171, 404n33 home life of, 30–31, 52, 53, 65,
Tipanya, Ashok (PT’s brother), 20, 171, 174–175, 176f4.1, 332,
21f1.1, 28, 30, 45, 51–53, 69–70, 402n6, 404n34
170–171, 404n33 interview with Shabnam, 174–176
Tipanya, Kamla (Ambaram’s wife), 52, singing and interpreting bhajans,
61, 109 149–151, 171
Tipanya, Prahlad Singh (Prahladji) Tipanya, Sumitra (Ashok’s wife), house-
American tours 2003 & 2009, 12, hold of, 49, 404n33
65–67, 68, 104–105 Tiwari, Kapil
annual program hosted by, 49, 56, on authenticity, 134–137,
332–334 139–140, 416n38
audio and video CD’s, 105, 105f2.2 director of Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad
audio cassettes (see cassettes, (Tribal and Folk Art Institute),
featuring PT) 19, 22, 24, 133, 363
on authenticity, 144–145 interviews with Shabnam Virmani,
author’s first meeting with, 19–21, 104 132, 133–140, 363–365
bhajan notebook (see Prahladji’s on Kabir’s truth, 136–137, 148
handwritten bhajan notebook) on Kumar Gandharva, 137–140
bhajans learned from Chenamaruji, on oral tradition, 133–134
86, 199 on religion and politics, 363–365
initiation into several nirguṇ sects, 33–35 Tiwari, P.N., Kabir textual scholarship
Kabir Panthi attack on, of, 120–121, 122, 147
309–310, 431n17 transcendence. See Rai, Alok; spiritual-
Kabīr Smārak Sevā aur Shodh ity, and Marxist/materialist/
Sansthānka started by, 48–49 leftist views
Index 467
unstruck/boundless sound. film Kabīra khaḍā bāzār meṇ/In the

See anahad nād Market Stands kabir, 309–310,
Urdu 410n38, 427n17, 431n17
Fatehpur manuscript’s absence film Kōi suntā hai/Someone is
of, 124 Listening, 138, 402n17
Kabir reception reflected in Mughal films, CDs, and books produced by,
texts, 92, 142 13, 68, 102, 106, 298
mapping of Hindi-Urdu literature Kaluram interview, 300–301
by Orsini, 91, 407–408n20, Kapil Tiwari interview, 133–138,
412–413n14 139–140, 363–365
Naim (poet in Dewas), 307–308 Krishna Nath interview,
Perso-Arabic words in Man lāgo mero 379–380, 438n32
yār fakīrī meṇ, 195 oral traditions researched by, 16,
poetry added to the Mahābījak, 116–117 81–82, 85–86, 87–89, 96, 107,
rekhtā poetic form in Kabir singing, 129, 132–133, 201, 416n38
154, 418n10 on political issues, 378, 393–395,
Uttar Pradesh, 10, 75, 121, 162, 188, 319. 425n7, 437n30
See also Sadbhāv Yātrā and Prahladji singing together,
100f2.1, 102, 427n21
Vajpeyi, Ashok, x, 1, 19, 400n7, 401n1 PT interviews, 45–46, 58,
Vaudeville, Charlotte, Kabir textual 336–337, 432n24
scholarship of, 120–121, 122, sākhīs on love sung by, 191–192
148, 400n9 sākhīs on the mind sung by, 163–164
vichārdhārā (“thought-stream”), as singer, 100–101, 106, 163
115–116, 145 singing texts altered by, 98,
Virmani, Shabnam 101–102, 409n33
Ajab shahar/Wondrous City DVD on Sufi singers in Rajasthan and
PT’s U.S. tour, 66 Pakistan documented by, 70, 96,
Ajab shahar/Wondrous City internet 107, 378, 418n15
archive, 102–103, 436n22 Suresh Patel interview, 268–270
attacked by Kabir Panthis, See also Kabir Project based in Bangalore
309–310, 431n17
author’s partnering with, 12–13, 68, women and gender, 402n6
101, 105, 335, 428n35 Bhanwari Devi (Rajasthani singer),
Dayaram Sarolia interview, 55, 56–57 107–109
Dinesh Sharma interview, 254, in death rituals, 313
304–306 in Kabir singing culture, 23, 265,
film Chalo hamārā des/Come to 289, 378, 393–394
my country, 46–47, 54–55, 86, in Malwa culture, 4, 52, 61, 303
404n38, 427nn20–21 and satī, 101–102, 165
film Had-anhad/Bounded-Boundless, women priests, 403n27
70, 378, 418n15, 437n30 Zen. See Buddhism

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Oxford New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hess, Linda, author.

List of Figures vii

I.1. Prahladji and group performing on stage in Bangalore,

Doing acknowledgments always reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s

Ramachandra Guha has been a generous friend, consultant, and inspi-

This book uses a modified scholarly transliteration, in which certain let-

ś = śh; ṣ = ṣh; c = ch; ch = chh; ṛ = ṛi; jñ = gy.

Maiṇ kahatā ānkhoṇ kī dekhī

I talk of what I’ve seen with my own eyes,

A pervasive irony of this book is that it is a book. It enthuses about

subtle body made of energy, lotus-centers, coursing breath-streams, sound

circumstances, we can immerse ourselves in those circumstances and

The Genesis of This Project

to position myself on the question of authenticity, which was compulsory

ek sādhe sab sādhe, sab sādhe ek jāī

Chapter 1. “You Must Meet Prahladji!”

Chapter 2. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First

as across history and geography. These processes are vividly enacted in

Chapter 3. True Words of Kabir: Adventures

Chapter 4. In the Jeweler’s Bazaar: Malwa’s Kabir

Chapter 5. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First

Chapter 6. A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool

Chapter 7. Fighting over Kabir’s Dead Body

Chapter 8. Political/Spiritual Kabir

Particular chapters have their own arguments. Chapter 2 proposes that

A. K. Ramanujan and I got together three weeks before his utterly

“You Must Meet Prahladji!”

and in the company of distinguished people. There were two posters of

If you come from the dome of the sky,

Ashok’s arm rests lightly on Gokul’s shoulder. There’s an air of

My journals from February through July 2002 swarm with accounts of

1. The Literary Society of Nemavar puts me on the stage, garlands

April 18, 2002

April 19, 2002, 6 a.m.

Becoming a Kabir Singer

Their caste is Balai—a scheduled or Dalit caste, meaning one of those

When Ram plays inside you,

Balais are an important Dalit caste in Malwa. Ranked relatively

Prahladji’s wife Shantiji later told us that he made a tambūrā

I remembered encountering the semal while translating Kabir some

Here Prahladji inserts a Kabir sākhī to emphasize his point. Conversations

You’re big? So what?

Don’t be attracted to something just because of looks. On the physi-

Prahladji took initation (dikśhā), almost casually it seems, in several

grand annual function (see Juergensmeyer 1991; Bhattacharya 1996). In

[PT] If you get the secret, you can see my country.

What was that secret? I kept thinking about it.

A guru, a wise one, listens—

man mathurā dil dvāraka, kāyā kāśhi jān

Mathura, Dwarka, Kashi—people keep running to these pilgrim-